Aggressive posterior retinopathy of prematurity in large preterm babies in South India.

OBJECTIVE: To describe aggressive posterior retinopathy of prematurity (APROP) in a subset of premature babies, having gestational age (GA) of ≥28 weeks and birth weight (BW) of ≥1000 g.
DESIGN: Retrospective observational case series. SETTING AND PATIENTS: Case records of 99 babies, who were diagnosed to have APROP between July 2002 and October 2010 were reviewed. Fundus fluorescein angiography (FFA) was carried out in 19 babies.
RESULTS: The mean GA was 31.7 weeks (range 28-35 weeks) and mean BW was 1572 g (range 1000-2310 g). All these babies received supplemental unblended oxygen 3 days or longer after birth. Of the 52 babies who had an eye exam in the neonatal intensive care unit prior to discharge, 35 babies had loss of vascularised retina from zone II to zone I and four babies from zone III to zone I, when examined as an outpatient. FFA revealed large geographic areas of vaso-obliteration (more than 30 disc areas) posterior to the shunt vessels within vascularised retina.
CONCLUSIONS: Features of severe capillary bed loss in the vascularised retina were seen in our cases. Oxygen could be a precipitating factor in causing this retinopathy of prematurity in large babies.