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Neovascular age‐related macular degeneration is associated with cataract surgery
Author(s) -
Ho JauDer,
Xirasagar Sudha,
Kao LiTing,
Lin HerngChing
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
acta ophthalmologica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.534
H-Index - 87
eISSN - 1755-3768
pISSN - 1755-375X
DOI - 10.1111/aos.13511
Subject(s) - medicine , macular degeneration , hazard ratio , cataract surgery , confidence interval , incidence (geometry) , cohort , retrospective cohort study , diabetes mellitus , epidemiology , cohort study , proportional hazards model , surgery , ophthalmology , physics , optics , endocrinology
Purpose This retrospective cohort study examines the association between cataract surgery and neovascular age‐related macular degeneration (AMD) during 5‐year follow‐up using population‐based claims data. Methods We analysed data sourced from the Taiwan Longitudinal Health Insurance Database 2005. The study included 3465 patients who had undergone cataract operations and did not have a diagnosis of AMD before or on the surgery date (study group), and 10 395 age‐ and sex‐matched comparison patients selected randomly from the remaining patients without an AMD diagnosis before the index date. We tracked the claims of each patient for a 5‐year period to identify patients with a subsequent diagnosis of neovascular AMD. Results The incidence rate of neovascular AMD was 0.88 (95% confidence interval ( CI ): 0.66–1.14) per 1000 person‐years among all sampled patients, 1.60 (95% CI : 1.04–2.36) among the cataract surgery patients and 0.64 (95% CI : 0.43–0.91) among comparison patients (p < 0.001). Stratified Cox proportional analysis showed that relative to the comparison cohort, the adjusted hazard ratio for neovascular AMD during 5‐year follow‐up was 2.68 (95% CI : 1.55–4.66) for patients who had undergone cataract operation. We censored those who died during follow‐up period and adjusted for patients' monthly income, geographical location, urbanization level, diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease and hyperlipidaemia. Conclusion This study demonstrated epidemiological evidence of a link between cataract surgery and neovascular AMD during a 5‐year follow‐up period.