Prevalence of Retinal Vascular Diseases in a Tertiary Care Hospital in Türkiye: A Hospital-Based Epidemiologic Study

To determine the prevalence of diabetic retinopathy (DR), retinal vein occlusion (RVO), and retinal artery occlusion (RAO) in a tertiary care hospital in Türkiye.

The electronic records of all patients over the age of 18 years admitted to a tertiary care general hospital between January 2022 and January 2024 were retrospectively analyzed. For each of the three diseases, demographic data such as age, sex, and common complications were evaluated.

A total of 140,344 patients were retrospectively analyzed. Of these patients, 44.6% (n=62,575) were male and 55.4% (n=77,769) were female. The number of patients diagnosed with retinal vascular disease was 1,963 and 52.3% (n=1,028) of these patients were female. The prevalence of retinal vascular diseases in the general population was 1.4% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.34% to 1.46%). The prevalence of DR, RVO, and RAO was 1.12% (95% CI: 1.07% to 1.18%), 0.27% (95% CI: 0.24% to 0.3%), and 0.01% (95% CI: 0% to 0.01%), respectively. Among these three diseases, DR was statistically more common in women (p=0.048) and RAO in men (p=0.015), while RVO (p=0.079) was not associated with sex. In patients with DR, macular edema was more common in patients older than 50 years, while neovascularization was more common in patients younger than 50 years. The development of macular edema and neovascularization was not associated with sex in patients with these three diseases.

This is the first study to report the demographic data of patients diagnosed with retinal vascular diseases in Türkiye. However, there is a need for nationwide, multicenter, hospital and community-based studies including different geographical regions of Türkiye that examine the data of patients in detail.