Visual outcome and its prognostic factors in patients presenting with ocular war injuries at an army hospital in Pakistan.

OBJECTIVE To determine the visual outcome and its prognostic factors in patients presenting with ocular war injuries. METHODS This descriptive, observational study was conducted at the Combined Military Hospital, Peshawar, Pakistan, from June 2012 to March 2016, and comprised soldiers with ocular war injuries. Informed consent was obtained from all participants. A predesigned proforma was used to record patient's demographic details along with the cause, side, type and severity of injury. Injuries were classified as open globe or closed globe injuries. Ocular trauma score grade was used to describe the severity of injury. RESULTS There were 210 participants with an overall mean age of 29.34±5.35 years (range: 20-43 years). All of them were male. Left side was more frequently involved, i.e. in 126(60%) cases. The most frequent underlying cause was improvised explosive device blast injury 114(54.3%), followed by blunt trauma 42(20%) and road traffic accidents 24(11.4%). Closed globe injuries were more frequent and were recorded in 120(57.1%) patients. The visual outcome was good in 62(29.5%) patients, followed by fair in 51(24.3%) patients while 51(24.3%) patients had worst visual outcome. When stratified, there was no significant difference of worst visual outcome with patient's age (p=0.279). However, improvised explosive device blast (p=0.002), open globe injury (p=0.000), ocular trauma score grade 1; open globe (p=0.049), closed globe (p=0.003) were associated with significantly higher frequency of worst visual outcome. Zone-III injury was also prognostic of worst visual outcome, but the difference was significant only in case of open globe injury (p=0.003). CONCLUSIONS Improvised explosive device blast, open globe injury and ocular trauma score grade 1 were poor prognostic features and resulted in significantly higher frequency of poor visual outcome.