Hospitalization characteristics of patients with glaucoma in Central and West Serbia

Abstract

Introduction/Objective Glaucoma is a chronic disease that impairs the optic nerve irreversibly and can lead to serious loss of vision and blindness. As the most frequent out of all, primary open-angle glaucoma has a worldwide incidence of 2.4 million. The objective of this article is to examine the characteristics of glaucoma hospitalization patterns in Central and West Serbia in the 2006-2017 period. Methods This study was a retrospective analysis of glaucoma hospitalizations in the Kragujevac Clinical Center from 2006 to 2017 (n = 1,751). All hospitalizations were divided according to discharge diagnoses into the following three subgroups: primary open-angle glaucoma, the primary closure glaucoma, and secondary glaucoma and other glaucoma types. Results The average hospitalization rate for glaucoma is 5/10,000 inhabitants. The lowest rate was recorded in 2013 (1.8/10,000) and the highest in 2015 (9.3/10,000). The rehospitalization rate ranged from 0.5/10,000 in 2013 to 6.9/10,000 in 2015, with an average of 2.4 patients per 10,000. The most common glaucoma was secondary glaucoma and other glaucoma types (44.6%), followed by primary open-angle glaucoma (37.9%) and primary closure glaucoma (17.5%). The average hospitalization length was 6.5 ± 4.9 days and it decreased from the average 9.7 ± 6.5 (2006) to 5.5 ± 3.7 days (2013) (p < 0.01) in all glaucoma types. Conclusion There was a significant reduction of the hospitalization length in all glaucoma types in Central and West Serbia. The hospitalization rates varied with a significant increase since 2013, which is the consequence of the increase in rehospitalization rates.