Correlation of aphakic retinal detachment and refractive error with gender.

I analyzed the aphakic refractive errors of men and women separately in a statistical study of patients with aphakic retinal detachments. I compared the distribution of aphakic refractive errors in a population of 81 adult patients with nontraumatic aphakic retinal detachment with that of a randomly selected control population of 93 adult patients with aphakia. As a group, women who developed aphakic retinal detachments were significantly more myopic than female controls (11.41 vs 12.37 diopters of spherical equivalent; P = .004). In contrast, the refractive error in men did not differ between the aphakic retinal detachment and control groups (11.31 vs 11.68 diopters; P = .156). A significantly higher percentage of patients with bilateral (87%) aphakic retinal detachments were men (P = .017). In men other risk factors for aphakic retinal detachment, including cardiovascular disease, may overshadow the influence of axial myopia.