Screening for Retinopathy of Prematurity at the top end of Australia

1. Nishantha Wijesinghe¹
2. Chris Woollard²
3. Tharmalingam Mahendrarajah¹

¹Royal Darwin Hospital, Darwin
²Flinders University School of Medicine

Purpose: To determine the incidence, severity, adherence to guidelines and compliance with follow up of Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP) at Royal Darwin Hospital.

Methods: A retrospective analysis of records of all infants who underwent ROP screening at Royal Darwin Hospital between January 2008 and January 2010. We performed a descriptive study and a statistical analysis.

Results: In the 2 year period the total number of babies screened was 103, or 8.9% of total admissions to special care nursery. 408 examinations were performed in total with an average of 3.9 per baby. There were 56 male and 47 females while 62% of total were indigenous. Gestational age ranged from 24 to 33 weeks while birth weights ranged from 487g to 2205g. 24 babies were found to have some level of ROP. 11 were indigenous (45.9%). Initial examination was 1 week or more later than the guideline in 46%, but reduced to 7.2% for follow up. 23 were lost to follow up which consisted of 18 indigenous babies (78%).

Conclusions: The frequency of any stage of ROP in the RDH population was 23%, which was slightly lower than previous studies. As would be expected from previous ROP research, the average gestational age and birth weight were significantly lower in ROP group (P<0.001). Intervention rates were also lower than previous studies. It was noted that there is a large indigenous population in whom there is known difficulty with compliance to follow up and therefore a culturally catered approach may help.