Retinal Vein Occlusion and the Risk of Acute Myocardial Infraction: A 3-Year Follow-up Study

AIM: Using a nationwide population-based dataset, this study investigated the relationship between retinal vein occlusion (RVO) and subsequent acute myocardial infarction (AMI).

METHODS: This study is based on a nationwide database released by the Taiwan National Health Research Institute. The study cohort consisted of all ambulatory care patients who were diagnosed as having RVO during 2000 approximately 2003 (n = 591), while the control cohort comprised 2955 randomly selected patients extracted from the same dataset; five patients for every RVO patient, matched by age and gender. Each patient was individually tracked for 3 years from their index ambulatory care visit. Cox proportional hazard regressions were performed to compute the adjusted 3-year AMI-free survival rates, comparing these two cohorts.

RESULTS: RVO patients had a significantly higher rate of AMI (1.86% vs 0.78%) during the 3-year follow-up period than patients in the comparison group (p = 0.032). However, after adjusting for the patients' gender, age, geographic region and comorbid medical disorders, there was no significant difference between the central retinal vein occlusion, branch retinal vein occlusion patients and the comparison group in terms of the hazard of AMI during the 3-year follow-up period.

CONCLUSION: RVO did not independently increase the risk of AMI.