Development of cataract in hypertensive and non-hypertensive patients

Abstract

Blindness is a public health problem in developing and developed countries. According to WHO global data for visual impairments 2010, common occurence of blindness was 20.5%.One of the major cause for this is Cataract. Cataract is responsible for about 62.6% of all cases of blindness in India. If cataract left untreated most of the people will in due course become acutely visionless. The motive behind the present study is to find the connection between hypertension and development of cataract. A comparative study was carried for the two months of duration. 200 patients divided in two groups (hypertensive and non-hypertensive) were included in our study. We observed that prevalence of cataract is significantly higher in hypertensive (83.15%) patients as compared to non-hypertensive (70.01%) patients. Hypertension is involved in the pathological pathway of cataract development through an inflammatory mechanism. Nuclear cataract was found to be most common followed by cortical and posterior subcapsular cataract.