Prevalence of glaucoma in patients with obstructive sleep apnea

Introduction: Determining prevalence of glaucoma in patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) could be meaningful from public health point of view in Indian scenario, given that only few studies are reported so far. Aim: To study the prevalence of glaucoma in patients with OSAS. Materials and Methods: This was a prospective, observational study carried out between June 2014 and June 2016 in a tertiary care hospital. The study enrolled patients who were diagnosed with OSAS by the overnight polysomnography, depending upon inclusion and exclusion criteria. The included patients underwent complete ophthalmological evaluation including visual acuity, intra-ocular pressure, slit lamp examination with biomicroscopy, gonioscopy, indirect ophthalmoscopy, automated perimetry and optical coherence tomography. Results: A total of 34 patients diagnosed with OSAS (28 male; mean age 53.94±14.34 year) were included in the study. Among 34 patients, 16 patients had severe, 13 had moderate and 5 had mild OSAS, respectively. Of the 34 patients included in the study, 10 patients had glaucoma (n=5 primary open angle glaucoma and n= 5 preperimetric glaucoma) with prevalence of 29.4%. There is no correlation between severity of OSAS and mean deviation (r= -0.062; p=0.73), pattern standard deviation (r= -0.024; p=0.89) and retinal nerve fibre layer thickness (r= 0.057; p=0.751). Duration of OSAS negatively correlated with RNFL thickness (r= -0.736; p<0.001). Conclusions: Our study demonstrated high prevalence of glaucoma in patients diagnosed with OSAS in Indian scenario. However, further large scale studies are required.