This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

Retinal vein occlusion associated with higher rate of stroke

Add topic to email alerts

Receive an email when new articles are posted on

Please provide your email address to receive an email when new articles are posted on .

Subscribe

Added to email alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

Back to Healio

We were unable to process your request. Please try again later. If you continue to have this issue please contact customerservice@slackinc.com.

Back to Healio

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Patients with retinal vein occlusions appear to have significantly more comorbidities, as well as an increased risk for cerebrovascular accident.

Nancy M. Holekamp

In a cohort of patients gathered from a health care utilization database, rates of angina, cardiac arrhythmia, diabetes, heart disease, acute thrombolytic events, hyperlipidemia, hypertension and cerebrovascular accident were all significantly higher among 4,500 patients with retinal vein occlusions compared with 13,500 age-matched controls.

There was no greater risk of myocardial infarction among patients with retinal vein occlusion, according to Nancy M. Holekamp, MD, who presented the data here at the American Society of Retina Specialists annual meeting.

However, "after adjusting for confounders, retinal vein occlusion patients have approximately a twofold increased risk for cerebrovascular accident compared to non-retinal vein occlusion controls, with a relative risk of 1.72," Dr. Holekamp said.