Elsevier

Ophthalmology

Volume 111, Issue 7, July 2004, Pages 1317-1325
Ophthalmology

Original article
Incidence of retinopathy of prematurity from 1996 to 2000: Analysis of a comprehensive New York state patient database

Poster presented at: American Academy of Ophthalmology Annual Meeting, November, 2003; Anaheim, California.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ophtha.2003.10.030Get rights and content

Abstract

Objective

To determine the current incidence of retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) in New York state.

Design

Population-based cohort study.

Participants

Newborn infants (15 691) with initial hospital length of stay >28 days and date of discharge from January 1, 1996, to December 31, 2000. Subjects were identified from the New York Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System (SPARCS) database, which contains information about every patient hospitalized in New York during this period.

Methods

Demographic and clinical information about eligible infants was abstracted by searching the SPARCS database. Patients with a discharge diagnosis of ROP or who underwent laser retinal photocoagulation, scleral buckle, or pars plana vitrectomy were identified by searching for appropriate discharge and procedure codes. Incidence of ROP in the study population was determined and analyzed on the basis of birth weight.

Main outcome measures

Incidence of any ROP, laser photocoagulation, scleral buckle, and pars plana vitrectomy in study population.

Results

On the basis of SPARCS coding, the overall incidence of any ROP among all newborn infants in New York state during the study period was 0.2% (2284 of 1 167 427), or 1 in 511. The incidence of any ROP in the study population of newborns with initial hospital length of stay >28 days was 20.3% (2152 of 10 596) among infants with birth weight <1500 g and 27.3% (1839 of 6745) among infants with birth weight <1200 g. Among study patients with any ROP, the proportion who underwent laser photocoagulation during initial hospital stay was 9.5% (218 of 2284), and the proportion who underwent scleral buckle or vitrectomy surgery was 0.5% (12 of 2284). Seventeen study newborns with birth weight ≥2000 g had a discharge diagnosis of ROP, although none of these patients required laser or incisional surgery during hospitalization.

Conclusions

This study involves the largest known cohort of newborns that has been analyzed for ROP. The incidence of ROP in this study is lower than results from previous multicenter clinical trials. However, the diagnosis of ROP in 17 study newborns with birth weight ≥2000 g deserves further investigation and may have implications for ROP screening protocols.

Section snippets

Source of data

The primary data source for this study was the SPARCS administrative database, which was established by the New York State Department of Health in 1979.20 By law, the Uniform Hospital Discharge Data Set must be submitted to this integrated information network for every inpatient from each of the 252 hospitals in the state. Separate databases are used to store records from hospitals in New York city and the remainder of New York state, which were combined for the purposes of this study. Each

Patient and database characteristics

Data about 11 974 163 patients discharged from hospitals in New York were present in the SPARCS system from the years 1996 to 2000, of whom 1 167 427 were newborn infants. This reflects 90.4% of the 1 292 289 registered live births in New York state during the same period (New York State Department of Health, http://www.health.state.ny.us/nysdoh/consumer/vt.htm. Accessed 1/20/03); 15 691 newborns in SPARCS met the inclusion criteria of “extended-stay newborn infant” by having a length of stay

Discussion

This retrospective study constitutes the largest known group that has been studied to determine the incidence and risk factors for ROP. By use of the SPARCS database, each of the 1 167 427 infants born in a New York hospital from 1996 to 2000 was analyzed. Furthermore, this represents a broad geographic and socioeconomic spectrum of patients taken from 252 acute care hospitals in urban and rural New York (Table 1).

From this population, a study cohort of 15 691 “extended-stay infants” was

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  • Cited by (0)

    Manuscript no. 230047.

    Supported by the National Library of Medicine and the National Eye Institute, Bethesda, Maryland (grant no.: LM07079, EY13972) (MFC).

    The authors have no commercial, proprietary, or financial interest in any of the products or companies described in this article.

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