The Affects of Smoking on Cataract Formation in Turkish Patients

Aims: To investigate whether smoking influences cataract formation age and cataract type in patients who underwent senile cataract surgery.

Study Design: Retrospective cross-sectional.

Place and Duration of Study: The study was conducted in the Department Of Ophthalmology, Ahi Evran Faculty Of Medicine between November 2014 and March 2018.

Methodology: Five hundred eighty-one patients were included, who were operated on for senile cataracts. Age, gender, cataract type, and smoking status of patients were recorded. Congenital, traumatic, drug-induced, and uveitic cataracts were excluded from the study. The smoking status of patients was divided into three groups: currently smoking, never smoking, quitted smoking. The smoking load of patients was calculated as packages/year.

Results: Of total of 581 patients, 47.8% (278) were female and 52.2% (303) were male and the mean ages were 66.68 ± 10.68 years and 66.17 ± 9.37 years, respectively. There was an association between gender and smoking status (p<0.05). Smoking rate (both currently smoking and quit smoking) was higher among males. The mean age of cataract patients who were smokers was statistically lower than the mean ages of non-smokers and quitters (p <0.001). There was a statistical association between cataract type of patients and smoking status (p=0.0152). This resulted from a lower incidence of cortical cataracts and higher incidence of posterior subcapsular and nuclear cataracts in smokers. Among these three groups, cortical cataract was the most frequent in the non-smoker group. It was found that smoking increases the posterior subcapsular cataract, but it has less effect on cortical cataract formation.

Conclusion: Smoking causes cataract formation in younger ages and higher posterior subcapsular cataract rate. We suggest that this finding may prevent beginning of smoking and increase the motivation of individuals to quit smoking.