Proportion and Clinical Profile of Thyroid Ophthalmopathy in Patients with Graves’ Disease Presenting at a Tertiary Care Centre in Kerala

BACKGROUND Thyroid eye disease is a relatively rare condition, with an incidence of 2.9 to 16.0 cases per 100 000 population per year. Approximately 50 % of patients with Graves’ disease (GD) develop clinically apparent thyroid eye disease. It may cause severe damage to vision and orbital architecture. It is the most frequent cause of unilateral or bilateral proptosis in adults. METHODS A cross sectional study of 80 patients with GD was carried out in association with thyroid clinic of Government Medical college Thiruvananthapuram for a period of 1 year from April 2017 to March 2018. Subjects who have a prior diagnosis of Graves’ disease including those who are on antithyroid drugs were included in the study. Patients who are sick due to other systemic diseases like cardiac failure and end stage renal disease were excluded. RESULTS Eighty patients with mean age of 45.31 years were studied. Out of them, 66% were females and 34% were males. Ophthalmopathy was present in 38.8%.Majority had mild and bilateral disease (61.2 %). Only a small percentage had sight threatening disease (6.4 %).The mean age of patients with ophthalmopathy was 47.93. Major population with ophthalmopathy was females. Majority of patients with ophthalmopathy (64.5 %) retained a good visual acuity better than 6 / 9. Lid retraction was the most common manifestation among patients with Graves’ ophthalmopathy that is 74.2% followed by exophthalmos (64.5 %) and eye movement restriction and soft tissue involvement (58.1 %). Diplopia, optic nerve dysfunction were rare (3.2 %). Only 19.3 % patients had active disease according to clinical activity score. Major clinical sign of activity was redness of conjunctiva. Maximum no. of patients with active disease had a clinical activity score of 4. Smoking showed a significant association with the severity of ophthalmopathy. (p value 0.001) There was a significant association between age and activity of disease. (p value 0.021). No association was found between duration of disease with presence or severity of ophthalmopathy. There was no association between co- morbidities with presence or severity of ophthalmopathy. No association was found between hormone status and presence or severity of ophthalmopathy. CONCLUSIONS Our results indicated that the prevalence of ophthalmopathy in our population with GD evaluated at our tertiary care centre was similar to that reported in the Caucasians of European origin. Clinically active and sight threatening ophthalmopathy was uncommon. KEYWORDS Graves’ Disease, Ophthalmopathy