Prevalence of Keratoconus on Screening of Egyptian LASIK Candidates: A Retrospective Multicenter Study.

PURPOSE: This is a retrospective multicenter study to report the incidental discovery of keratoconus (clinical and subclinical) in a screening of laser vision correction (LVC) surgery candidates.

METHODS

This retrospective multicenter study was conducted on patients presenting for LVC in four Egyptian governorates (Cairo-Giza-6th of October-Beni Suef) during the year 2018. The patients were examined using the Pentacam HR (OCULUS Optikgeräte GmbH, Wetzlar, Germany) or Sirius (Costruzione Strumenti Oftalmici, Italy). The following parameters were evaluated: the axial curvature map, keratometry (Kmax and K2 on the posterior surface), minimum corneal thickness, anterior elevation, posterior elevation, Baiocchi-Calossi -Versaci index (Sirius), index of height decentration, and BAD-D (Pentacam). The prevalence of keratoconus cases was reported and data were analyzed.

RESULTS

A total of 46 out of 782 candidates presenting for LVC in 2018 were incidentally discovered as clinical or subclinical keratoconus cases and were excluded from performing the LVC procedure.

CONCLUSION

Screening of LVC candidates for keratoconus is a crucial tool to detect the incidence of the disease in the Egyptian population.