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Patterns of treatment in patients with sickle cell retinopathy in the United States

Eye volume 39, pages 2722–2724 (2025)Cite this article

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Sickle cell disease (SCD) is the most common inherited hemoglobinopathy and a leading cause of proliferative sickle cell retinopathy (SCR), a vision-threatening microvasculopathy marked by vitreous haemorrhage and tractional retinal detachment [1]. Randomised trials and systematic reviews leave uncertainty about the benefit of laser photocoagulation, and evidence for anti-VEGF therapy is scant (Farber 1991; Myint 2015; Dinah 2022) [2,3,4]. This is unlike diabetic retinopathy, where the indications and treatment algorithms are well defined. Consequently, contemporary treatment sequences and their timing remain poorly defined.

We queried the TriNetX™ US Collaborative Network (61 health-care organizations) for adults with concurrent SCD and SCR diagnosed between 1 January 2005 and 1 January 2023. Retinopathies caused by hypertension, age-related macular degeneration, hereditary dystrophies, diabetes with ophthalmic complications, peripheral degeneration, retinopathy of prematurity, vasculitis or vascular occlusion were excluded. Six mutually exclusive procedures were analysed: laser photocoagulation, intravitreal injection, pars plana vitrectomy (PPV) for vitreomacular interface disease, combined PPV-endolaser, PPV for complex tractional/rhegmatogenous detachment, and other PPV indications. Initiation of a different modality defined the next line-of-treatment (LOT).

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Fig. 1: Treatment Pathways in Sickle Cell Retinopathy.

Data availability

The data supporting this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bernice and Harvey Jones Eye Institute, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, AR, USA

    Muhammad Z. Chauhan & Ahmed B. Sallam

  2. Cullen Eye Institute, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA

    Asad Loya

  3. Dean McGee Eye Institute, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, OK, USA

    Zain S. Hussain

  4. University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Saint Kitts, Basseterre, Saint Kitts and Nevis

    Zain S. Hussain

  5. Texas A&M University Health Sciences Center, Houston, TX, USA

    Jawad Muayad

  6. Department of Ophthalmology, Assiut University Hospitals, Faculty of Medicine, Assiut, Egypt

    Mohamed K. Soliman

  7. University Hospitals Eye Institute, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA

    Mohamed K. Soliman

  8. Vitreoretinal Division, King Khaled Eye Specialist Hospital, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

    Abdulrahman H. Badawi

  9. Department of Ophthalmology, Ain Shams University, Faculty of Medicine, Assiut, Egypt

    Sami H. Uwydat & Ahmed B. Sallam

Authors
  1. Muhammad Z. Chauhan
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  2. Asad Loya
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  3. Zain S. Hussain
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  4. Jawad Muayad
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  5. Mohamed K. Soliman
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  6. Abdulrahman H. Badawi
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  7. Sami H. Uwydat
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  8. Ahmed B. Sallam
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Contributions

MZC and ABS: Study conceptualization; ABS: Supervision; MZC, MKS, AHB, and SHU: Methodology guidance; AL, ZSH, JM, and MZC: Data collection and statistical analysis; MKS, AHB, and SHU: Drafting and revising the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ahmed B. Sallam.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Human subjects

The study did not meet the criteria for human subjects research, as this was an analysis of an existing anonymised dataset.

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Chauhan, M.Z., Loya, A., Hussain, Z.S. et al. Patterns of treatment in patients with sickle cell retinopathy in the United States. Eye 39, 2722–2724 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41433-025-03955-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41433-025-03955-3

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