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Analysis of the causes for enucleation can give hints for the spectrum of severe ocular diseases and for tendencies in surgical treatment of ocular disorders. 1-6 Since little information on enucleation causes has been available for China, we investigated the reasons for enucleations in one of the leading referral ophthalmic centres of China.
Methods
For the last 50 years, the Beijing Tongren Eye Centre has been one of the best known eye hospitals all over China, with 784 000 patients treated and 59 000 ocular surgeries performed in 2010. All enucleated eyes have routinely been histologically examined in the centre's department of ocular pathology. In the study period from 1960 to 2009, the pathology department received 9185 enucleated globes. Histopathological and clinical charts provided general and clinical data, and histological paraffin sections stained with H&E were available for all eyes. The main diagnoses as causes for enucleation were divided into glaucoma, tumour, infection and inflammation, eyeball rupture, phthisis bulbi, and others.
Results
Out of the 9185 enucleated globes, 9167 (99.8%) eyes were available for our study. Figures ofct 2 enucleations were for the periods 1960-1969, n=1410; 1970-1979, n=1344; 1980-1989, n=1465; 1990-1999, n=1397; and 2000-2009, n=3551. The most common enucleation cause was phthisis bulbi (34.0%), followed by tumours (26.4%), traumatic globe rupture (19.6), glaucoma (6.8%), infection/inflammations (3.9%) and other reasons (9.3%) ( tables 1 - 3 ) ( figure 1 ). During the study period, frequency of infection/inflammation and glaucoma as enucleation causes decreased, and the frequency of tumours and phthisis bulbi increased ( figure 1 ). Within the...