Pigmentary dispersion syndrome and pigmentary glaucoma: Diagnostic relevance of the classical triad in a Mediterranean population.

Introduction and objectives: To assess prevalence of classic clinical signs of Pigment Dispersion Syndrome (PDS) in PDS and Pigmentary Glaucoma (PG) in caucasian patients from Southern Spain.

Materials and methods: Cross-sectional observational case-series study evaluating the prevalence of characteristic clinical signs of PDS: Krukenberg spindle (KS), Trabecular meshwork pigmentation (TMP) and Iris transillumination defects (ITD). Differences between PDS and PG patients are evaluated and the probability of association with PG of clinical signs with statistically significant differences is also calculated (Odds Ratio OR in logistic regression analysis).

Results: 144 PDS/PG patients. Prevalence of KS, TMP and ITD is 91%, 88.9% and 24.3%. 48 right eyes (66.7%) were PDS and 24 right eyes (33.3%) were considered PG patients. Prevalence of KS is 95.8% in PDS and 91.7% in PG (p = 0.47). Prevalence of TMP is 87.5% in PDS and 95.8% in PG (p = 0.26). Prevalence of ITD is 16.7% in PDS and 41.7% in PG (p = 0.02). OR of those presenting PG is 3.57 for ITD (95% CI 1.17 to 10.85) (p = 0.02).

Conclusions: There are no major differences in the prevalence of KS and TMP in our population of patients with PDS/PG compared to published data in the Caucasian population (91% vs 95% for KS and 88.9% vs 86% for TMP) but there are differences in the prevalence of ITD (24.3% vs 86%).