SOCIOECONOMIC DEPRIVATION STATUS OF PATIENTS WITH KERATOCONUS

To compare the socieconomic status of patient with keratoconus undergoing corneal cross-linking and corneal grafting.

University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, United Kingdom

Retrospective review of our Electronic Medical Records was undertaken to identify all adult patients ≤30 years old who had corneal cross-linking (CXL) or corneal graft (penetrating keratoplasty or anterior lamellar keratoplasty) for keratoconus (KC) in our hospital in the last 10 years. The postcodes of these patients were linked to the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) 2019 to estimate the level of social deprivation. IMD is an official measure of relative deprivation based on various indicator and  has 10  Deciles; decile 1 represents the most deprived population and decile 10 the least deprived. The two groups were compared using unpaired t-tests. Statistical analysis was performed using Graphpad Prism® Version 10.1.1.

We identified 486 patients that had CXL and 60 patients that had corneal graft for KC. Mean age± SD was 24±3.5 years in the first group and 24.7±3.1 in the second (p=0.2). Mean IMD was 5.9 ±2.5 for the first group and 5.5± 2.4 for the second (p< 0.05). For context mean IMD of the area that our hospital serve is 7.3.

Socioeconomic deprivation has an established link to a variety of pathological systemic and ophthalmic conditions. In this study we demonstrate that patients with keratoconus have lower socieoconomic status comparing to the general population and that patient who need corneal grafting (thus having more severe disease) are more socioeconomically deprived compared to CXL patients.