[Retinal detachment in pediatrics : Etiology and risk factors]

Juvenile retinal detachment is uncommon but is a severe threat to visual acuity. This study demonstrates the etiology and risk factors of retinal detachment in patients age 0-20 years.

A cohort was selected comprising 259 patients (278 eyes) who were not older than 20 years at the age at onset of retinal detachment in the only or the first affected eye and had undergone surgery at least once at the Department of Ophthalmology of the University Medical Center of Munich between January 1980 and October 1998. This cohort was analyzed retrospectively with regard to medical antecedents. We separated the group consisting of only one affected eye or the first affected eye (259 eyes) from the group with bilateral retinal detachment (56 eyes).

Of the 259 patients, 72% were male. The average age of onset was 13.5 years, and 27.8% suffered from a systemic disease in which malformations were frequent. The most frequent ocular antecedents were ocular trauma in 52.9% and ocular malformations, especially myopia in 37.5%. In 58.7% of the fellow eyes, there was a disorder predisposing to retinal detachment, and10.8% of the patients suffered from bilateral retinal detachment. The group with bilateral retinal detachment had a remarkably high percentage of systemic diseases as well as malformations that were most frequent in systemic and ocular antecedents.

The study confirms ocular trauma and myopia as important risk factors for juvenile retinal detachment. Because of the high association with malformations as an endogenous background and their conspicuous frequency in patients with bilateral retinal detachment, a genetic background for retinal detachment may be concluded.