Demographic, Clinical, Therapeutic and Evolutionary Features of Cataract in North-African Diabetic Population

Background: Cataract is the leading cause of reversible blindness in the world and its treatment is the most common surgery in ophthalmology. Compared to the non-diabetic populations, cataract occurs earlier and more frequently in patients suffering from diabetes mellitus necessitating urgent operation to avoid a multitude of problems including the correction of the visual impairment as well as the accessibility of fundus examination to look after diabetic retinopathy and treat this latter by photocoagulation.

Aim: This study aims to highlight the difference of socio-demographic, clinical, therapeutic, and evolutionary features between a population of diabetic and non-diabetic patients using SPSS version 11.5 software to analyze the data.

Methods: Throughout our work, we compared the socio-demographic, clinical, therapeutic, and evolutionary characteristics between diabetic and non-diabetic populations who had received cataract surgery. It’s a retrospective study of 2,000 patients, including 672 diabetics and 1328 non-diabetics in our ophthalmology department between January and December 2019.

Results: The average age in the diabetic group is lower than non-diabetic patients (62.5 versus 66.8 years) with a masculine predominance (61.7%). Preoperative visual acuity varies from light perception to 3/10 with a predominance of total white (28.2%). We usually performed cataract surgery by phacoemulsification (94.3%) under local anesthesia (99.7%). Intraoperative complications are infrequent and comparable between the two groups (p = 0.37), but postoperative complications, dominated by secondary cataract and macular edema, are more frequent in diabetics (p = 3.10-7).

Conclusion: Mean postoperative visual acuity was lower in diabetics (8.08 versus 7.36/ p = 0) especially in subjects suffering from diabetic retinopathy.