Systemic diseases in age related cataract patients.

Age related cataract is the most common cause of blindness in the world. Most of these patients are elderly and are likely to have various associated systemic diseases. Higher mortality has been reported in patients undergoing cataract surgery. In order to determine the prevalence of associated systemic disease, we carried out a large eye camp based study in 6103 age related cataract patients. Seventeen percent of our patients had systemic problems. Pulmonary disease was seen in 4.3%, cardiovascular disease and hypertension in 4.1%, diabetes mellitus in 3.8%, skin disorder in 1.4%, orodental disease requiring tooth extraction in 3%, and other diseases were seen in 0.4% of the cases. Seventy eight patients (1.27%) had significant systemic complications post-operatively, 46% of whom required hospitalization in a tertiary care center. Thus, all patients undergoing cataract surgery should be evaluated for associated systemic diseases to prevent morbidity and mortality in the preoperative, operative and postoperative period.