Abstract:
Background:-Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is now emerging as an important cause of ocular morbidity in low and middle income countries. [1] Despite this, little is known about ROP in sub-Saharan Africa, Ethiopia. Lack of information has hampered the development of screening programs that would aid early detection and treatment of ROP. [2] The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence and risk factors which predispose to the development of ROP.
Objective: - To assess prevalence of retinopathy of prematurity and its risk factors among neonates discharged from NICU ward Jimma University medical center.
Methods: - Institution-based prospective longitudinal study was conducted on infants discharged from NICU and on follow up in HRIC, Department of pediatrics, Jimma University Medical Center during the study period.
SPSS version 20 was used. Descriptive statistics and Bi-variate and multivariate analysis was performed to identify the prevalence and risk factors of ROP among preterm neonates in Jimma University Medical Center. A p-value of less than 0.05 was considered as significant.
Result: A total of 71 infants were included in this study. This study revealed that the minimum and maximum age of the study participants was 26 days and 60 days respectively. More than half 43 (60.6%) of the study participants were males. The prevalence of ROP in this study is 2.8%.There was no statistically significant risk factor in our study.
Conclusion and recommendation;
The prevalence of ROP in this study of preterm babies is 2 of 71 screened (2.8%) and it did not progress to severe blinding disease; rather it spontaneously regressed, this show that the problem is actually happening in our set up and detecting this vision threatening case is very important to halt progression to visual loss. Better survival in the coming years could lead to increased epidemic of ROP blindness. It is important to set up screening protocols and its attendant equipment in our Setup to be able to identify the few who may develop vision threatening disease
