Prevalence of Keratoconus on Screening of Egyptian LASIK Candidates: A Retrospective Multicenter Study.

Purpose: This is a retrospective multicenter study to report the incidental discovery of keratoconus (clinical and subclinical) in a screening of laser vision correction (LVC) surgery candidates.

Methods: This retrospective multicenter study was conducted on patients presenting for LVC in four Egyptian governorates (Cairo-Giza-6 of October-Beni Suef) during the year 2018. The patients were examined using the Pentacam HR (OCULUS Optikgeräte GmbH, Wetzlar, Germany) or Sirius (Costruzione Strumenti Oftalmici, Italy). The following parameters were evaluated: the axial curvature map, keratometry (Kmax and K2 on the posterior surface), minimum corneal thickness, anterior elevation, posterior elevation, Baiocchi-Calossi -Versaci index (Sirius), index of height decentration, and BAD-D (Pentacam). The prevalence of keratoconus cases was reported and data were analyzed.

Results: A total of 46 out of 782 candidates presenting for LVC in 2018 were incidentally discovered as clinical or subclinical keratoconus cases and were excluded from performing the LVC procedure.

Conclusion: Screening of LVC candidates for keratoconus is a crucial tool to detect the incidence of the disease in the Egyptian population.