Baseline characteristics of the infant aphakia treatment study population: predicting recognition acuity at 4.5 years of age.

PURPOSE: To identify patient baseline characteristics that predict recognition acuity at 4.5 years of age in the Infant Aphakia Treatment Study, a study of patients with monocular infantile cataracts.

METHODS

We analyzed baseline characteristics of the 114 infants enrolled in the Infant Aphakia Treatment Study to determine which were most predictive of visual outcome at 4.5 years of age. All infants underwent cataract surgery between 1 and 7 months of age. Monocular acuity was assessed at 4.5 years of age by a traveling examiner using the Amblyopia Treatment Study HOTV protocol.

RESULTS

Age at cataract surgery was weakly associated with visual acuity (Spearman rank correlation coefficient = 0.19, P = 0.041) with median visual acuity better among the younger patients (28-48 days: 0.50 logMAR, 49-210 days: 1.10 logMAR, P = 0.046). Patients from families with private insurance had significantly better median visual acuity (0.60 vs. 1.40 logMAR, P = 0.0004). No other baseline characteristic revealed a significant bivariate relationship with visual acuity. A multiple linear regression relating visual acuity to all baseline characteristics demonstrated that only the availability of private insurance was statistically significant, accounting for 12% of the variance.

CONCLUSIONS

This analysis concurs with previous studies that early surgery is important for good visual outcomes in patients with unilateral infantile cataracts. The fact that only one baseline variable (private insurance) contributed to the multivariate analysis, accounting for 12% of the variance, suggests that predicting visual outcome for these patients is complicated at best, and cannot be estimated from baseline characteristics alone. (ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00212134.).