Surgery of age-related cataract: epidemiological nuances

AIM: To perform the analysis of the age composition of patients with a planned in-patient surgical procedure — “cataract phacoemulsification”.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: Three cohorts of patients diagnosed with “age-related senile cataract” were analyzed for the periods 2000–2003 (n = 6737), 2007–2009 (n = 13,015), and 2015–2017 (n = 1363) on the basis of “age at the time of planned surgery” in the ophthalmology hospital “S.V. Belyaev Kuzbass Clinical Hospital”. Persons with a diagnosis of “congenital, complicated, traumatic cataract” and persons operated as out-patients were excluded from all samples.

RESULTS: At the first stage, the average age of patients at the time of surgical treatment of patients diagnosed with senile cataract was calculated. At the second stage, the age of operated patients was analyzed by decades of human life. At the third stage, the assessment of the judgment about the “rejuvenation” of the age of operated patients with incipient cataract according to professional indications was carried out.

CONCLUSIONS: The average age of patients operated on with senile cataract during a fifteen-year period is a stable value in the range of 66–68 years. In the dynamics from 2000 to 2017, there was a redistribution of patients with senile cataract within the cohort by age. Rejuvenation of the age composition of persons with cataracts occurred due to an increase in patients aged 51–60 years by 2 times and a decrease in patients aged 71–80 years by 1.6 times. The proportion of patients undergoing surgical treatment for senile cataract in a hospital setting with visual acuity of 0.1 or less is stable and amounts to 78.4–87.5 %.