Demography and clinical pattern of newly diagnosed uveitis patients in Malaysia

INTRODUCTION: Uveitis is one of the common causes of visual impairment in Malaysia. It remains a challenging entity to diagnose and manage due to variation in its clinical presentation. This study aims to observe the demographic and clinical pattern of cases from the participating ophthalmology units in Malaysia. METHODS: This study involved prospective and multicentered data collection for patients newly diagnosed with uveitis from 1(st) January 2018 to 31(st) December 2018. Variables collected and analyzed included age, gender, ethnicity, nationality, state of origin, laterality, granulomatous or non-granulomatous uveitis, and etiology of uveitis. RESULTS: A total of 1199 newly diagnosed uveitis patients were analyzed within the study period. There was a significant association between the anatomical location of uveitis with age at presentation. The percentage of patients with anterior uveitis was higher in the ‘40 to 60’ years and ‘above 60’ years age groups at 52.1% (n = 210) and 61.3% (n = 114) respectively. In contrast the percentage of patients with posterior and panuveitis was higher in the 1 to 20 and 20 to 40 years age groups at 51.4% (n = 54) and 48.7% (n = 246) respectively. Sixty three percent of the patients presented with unilateral uveitis (n = 760, p < 0.001) vs bilateral. Non-granulomatous uveitis comprised 84.5% of all patients (n = 1013, p < 0.001) compared to granulomatous uveitis. Non-infectious etiology contributed to 65.7% of all patients (n = 788, p < 0.001) with the majority being unclassifiable uveitis (n = 686, 57.2%,). Specific inflammatory entities contributed to only 8.5% (n = 102) of the non-infectious causes with Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada (VKH) syndrome being the most common (n = 25, 2.1%,). Infectious uveitis comprised 34.3% (n = 411) with tubercular (TB) uveitis (n = 105, 8.8%) and viral uveitis (n = 107, 8.9%) contributing the most followed by ocular Toxoplasmosis (n = 93,7.8%).] CONCLUSION: This study has highlighted the demographic data and common causes of uveitis in Malaysia.