Clinical study on patients with Behçet's disease in Hokkaido

Behçet's disease is the most frequently encountered form of endogenous uveitis in Japan. The authors examined the clinical manifestations in cases with Behçet's disease over six years (1987-1992), and compared the results with those of a previous study (1978-1983). In the more recent study the number of new patients who visited our clinic was 54, compared to 180 in the previous study. As for the frequencies of the four major symptoms in the recent study, oral aphtha were seen in 100%, skin lesions in 88.9%, ocular lesions in 74.0%, and genital ulcers in 61.1% of the patients. The frequencies of these major symptoms were not significantly different between the two time periods investigated. Analysis of the type of ocular involvement showed that 94.4% of the patients in the more recent study belonged to the uveoretinitis type and 5.6% of the patients belonged to the iridocyclitis type, whereas in the previous study the figures were 71.5% and 28.5%, respectively. The ratio of the patients with severe eye involvement has increased recently. However the visual prognosis of patients was better in the more recent study than in the previous study. In the previous study a marked decrease in visual acuity was observed during a two-year follow-up, whereas in the 1987-1992 period it was observed that visual acuity hardly changed over two years. The observed improvement in the visual prognosis may be due to the fact that the treatment of Behçet's disease has become more effective in recent years.