ESPE Abstracts

Background: Many clinicians are aware of the systemic complications of obesity, however there are few studies on the effect of the ocular manifestations of obesity. The ocular complications of obesity include diabetic retinopathy, high intraocular pressure, cataracts, macular degeneration, floppy lid syndrome, pseudotumor cerebri, and exophthalmos. All of these complications can have serious consequences to the individual’s ocular health and visual well-being.

Objective and hypotheses: This study was performed to find out the interaction of exophtalmus with obesity in Turkish children and adolescents.

Methods: In this cross-sectional study, a total of 4294 children and adolescents aged between 6 and 17 years were included. Hertel exophthalmometry provides the simultaneous projection measurement of both eyes. The distance between the lateral orbital rim and corneal apex is measured on a mirror plane scaled in millimetres. When measurements were being taken, the child/adolescent stood upright on a chair with his/her back leant against the wall and looked straight ahead. Participants were positioned with heels, buttocks, back and head against the upright surface of the wall, with the head positioned in the Frankfurt horizontal plane. All measurements were obtained by two observers with the same device, twice in daytime in a 6-month period, and then the mean of these two measurements was calculated.

Results: For boys; exophtalmos of the right and left eyes were significantly different for 10, 12, 15, 16 years in normal weight vs overweight/obesity. For girls; exophtalmos of the right and left eyes were significantly different for 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14 years in normal weight vs overweight/obesity.

Conclusion: The cause of exophthalmos is still unknown. One theory is increased retro-orbital fat. We did not explore any relationship between exophthalmos and obesity. Consequently, it was found that the amount of body fat has a few or nearly no effect in exophtalmos.