Fifteen-year trends in indications for enucleation from a tertiary care center in South India

Aim: To analyze the trends in clinicopathologic indications for enucleations over a 15-year period. Materials and Methods: Clinicopathologic details of all eyes that underwent enucleation from January 1996 to December 2010 were drawn up from a computerized database. The study was divided into three periods of 5 years each and comparison tables for each cause of enucleation during these periods were generated. Chi-square test was used to compare proportions. Results: Out of a total 1467 enucleations performed during the study period, 693 (46%) were attributable to retinoblastoma, 189 (12.5%) to uveal melanoma, 228 (15%) to trauma, and 149 (10%) to phthisis bulbi. Intraocular tumors accounted for more than 63% of all enucleations performed. Over the three time periods, proportion of enucleations secondary to retinoblastoma increased from 38% in the 1st period to 58% in the 3rd period (P < 0.001). Enucleations for trauma showed statistically significant reduction in trends over the three periods (24% in the 1st period vs. 4.4% in the 3rd period, P < 0.001). Similar trends were also seen in the proportion of enucleations due to intractable glaucoma and chronic uveitis. The absolute number of enucleations secondary to retinoblastoma out of the total cases seen during the study period did not change over the three periods (range 51-60%). Conclusion: Intraocular tumors were the commonest indications for enucleation in our patient population despite the availability of globe-conserving treatments such as chemotherapy and radioactive plaques. We observed increasing trends in the proportion of enucleations due to retinoblastoma and reduction of enucleations secondary to trauma, chronic uveitis, and glaucoma.