[Prognostic factors of ocular involvement in Behçet's disease]

Behçet's disease is an idiopathic systemic inflammatory disease. Ocular involvement is part of the classification criteria for this disease. The uveitis is potentially severe. The goal of our study was to study the prognostic factors associated with low final visual acuity (VA) of less than 1/10 during the follow-up of patients with Behçet's disease.

This is a retrospective study including all consecutive patients hospitalized for Behçet's disease from January 2009 to December 2017 on a university hospital service. The age of onset, initial visual acuity, ophthalmologic manifestations, therapeutic management and progression were recorded. The prognostic factors associated with a final AV less than 1/10 were subjected to univariate analysis. Variables with p less than 0.05 were then included in a multivariate analysis.

Fifty patients were included. The mean age was 30, with a male predominance of 82 %. The univariate analysis showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the group of patients with a final VA less than 1/10 (n=28) and those with a final VA greater than 1/10 (n=22) with regard to young age at onset of the disease (95 % CI 0.80-0.94, P=0.001), high number of ocular recurrences (95 % CI 1.67-10, 12, P=0.002), and the presence of occlusive vasculitis (62.9 % vs. 21.4 %, P=0.002). Multivariate analysis confirmed that young age of onset of the disease and the number of recurrences were independent prognostic factors of final visual acuity less than 1/10.

Severe uveitis is a progressive step in Behçet's disease which may compromise the functional prognosis of these patients. Young age at onset of the disease as well as a high number of recurrences appear to be major prognostic factors in these patients.