Systemic Hypertension and the Eye: Highlighting a Comorbidity

Purpose: To identify ocular comorbidity in systemic hypertension. Methods: Research findings include data of 566 patients with RVO ( retinal vein occlusion) 408 and 158 patients with the central retinal vein occlusion (CRVO) and branch retinal vein occlusion (BRVO) respectively, representing a cases and and 566 controls, all aged 31 years and older. Excluded from case and control group were persons with degenerative changes of retina and ocular inflammation. At the baseline examination blood pressures was measured and were tested fibrinogen, recalcification time, plasma tolerance to heparin, prothrombin ratio for evaluation of blood coagulability. A statistical analysis was conducted by a commercially available statistical software package. Results: Among our cases hypertension was more prevalent with an elevated systolic and diastolic blood pressures comparing to controls. Hypercoagulability represented by elevated prothrombin ratio has shown a close association with age and RVO, evidencing higher risk of vasoocclusion in older persons with hypercoagulability. It was found that higher blood pressure: systolic blood pressure (OR, 8.49; 95% CI, 4.81 to 15.13) and diastolic blood pressure (OR, 9.37; 95% CI, 6.34 to 13.89); prothrombin ratio (OR, 4.0; 95% CI, 2.17 to 7.7) after adjusting for age and sex, plays a significant role in the development of RVO. Assessing an impact of systemic hypertension duration on RVO frequency it was evidenced direct relationship indicating increased cases of RVO in patients suffering from systemic hypertension 5-10 years and more obvious impact in case of longer duration–more than 10 years. Conclusions: The study emphasized the need for enhanced collaboration between specialties to ensure appropriate management of patients with systemic hypertension and ocular comorbidity in order to prevent occurrence of retinal vein occlusion.