Pediatric ocular trauma with pars plana vitrectomy in Southwest of China: clinical characteristics and outcomes

AIM: To investigate the clinical characteristics and predictive factors of pediatric ocular trauma patients with vitrectomy. METHODS: Pediatric ocular trauma patients (aged 14y or younger) who received vitrectomy in Southwest Hospital between January 2007 and December 2017 were reviewed retrospectively. Age, gender, mechanism of injury, final visual acuity (VA), and prognostic factors were analyzed. RESULTS: A total of 139 eyes in 139 pediatric patients were included in the study. The mean age was 7.4 +/- 3.7 years old and the male-to-female ratio was 5:1. There were 104 (74.8%) open globe injuries and 35 (25.2%) closed globe injuries. The top one traumatic eye injuries were penetrating injuries occur through sharp metal objects (43.9%). After vitrectomy, 116 patients had favorable anatomic outcome at the last follow-up, and 30 eyes (21.6%) achieved VA of 20/200 or better. Following univariate analysis, we found zone III injuries (P=0.021), poor initial VA (P=0.005), endophthalmitis (P=0.024), and recurrent retinal detachment (P<0.001) were poor prognostic factors for pediatric ocular trauma. After Logistic regression analysis, the poor initial VA (odds ratio: 8.276, 95%CI: 1.597-42.897, P= 0.012) and recurrent retinal detachment (odds ratio: 6.455, 95%CI: 2.372-17.562, P<0.001) were significantly correlated with unfavorable vision outcome in pediatric ocular trauma. CONCLUSION: The treatment of vitrectomy for severe ocular trauma results in favorable anatomic outcomes, but VA improvement is not as good as anatomic outcomes. Initial VA and recurrent retinal detachment are the independent prognostic indicators for unfavorable visual outcome of severe pediatric ocular trauma.