Risk of developing open-angle glaucoma in patients with carotid artery stenosis: A nationwide cohort study.

• Main Authors: Chien-Chih Chou, Min-Yen Hsu, Ching-Heng Lin, Che-Chen Lin, Chun-Yuan Wang, Ying-Cheng Shen, I-Jong Wang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2018-01-01
• Series: PLoS ONE
• Online Access: http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC5912741?pdf=render

Whether carotid artery stenosis (CAS) is an independent risk factor for open-angle glaucoma remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the association between CAS and the development of open-angle glaucoma in the Taiwanese population-based cohort derived from a longitudinal database containing claims data from the Taiwan National Health Insurance (NHI) program; this study enrolled 2093 patients with CAS and 8372 patients without CAS matched by age and sex from 1999 to 2010. Diagnoses of open-angle glaucoma (OAG) were identified during a follow-up period lasting through December 31, 2013. A Cox proportional hazards model was applied to evaluate the hazard ratio (HR) for OAG in the CAS cohort compared with the matched cohort. We found that the HR for open-angle glaucoma in the CAS cohort compared with the matched cohort. The adjusted HR for OAG in the CAS cohort was 1.50 (95% confidence interval, 1.11-2.02, P = .008). The Kaplan-Meier analysis revealed that the CAS cohort had a higher cumulative incidence of OAG than did the matched cohort during the follow-up period (log-rank test, P < .001). We concluded that CAS is a significantly independent risk factor for the development of OAG. Our finding is clinically important for the aging population, which has an increasing prevalence of CAS.