A large-scale US study has found the incidence of retinal vein occlusions (RVO) increases in the six months following Covid-19 infection.
Researchers led by Dr Bobeck Modjtahedi, Southern California Permanente Medical Group, studied 432,515 patients infected with Covid-19. They found the incidence of RVOs rose from a crude incidence rate of 8.30 per million patients in the six months prior to infection to 12.20 per million patients in the six months following infection. No association between Covid-19 and retinal artery occlusions was found. “This may further support the notion that venous disease may predominate over arterial disease in patients with Covid-19 infection,” they wrote in JAMA Ophthalmology.
A cause-and-effect association could not be established, since the increased risk of RVOs following infection could be due to worsening control of systemic blood pressure or lack of physical activity, researchers concluded.
