A Review on Ophthalmologic Manifestations in Beta-Thalassemia Major Patients

Beta-thalassemia is an inherited blood disorder that leads to early apoptosis of red blood cells (RBCs), ineffective erythropoiesis, and ocular complications. The disease is classified into beta-thalassemia minor (β-TMi), beta-thalassemia intermedia (β-TI), and beta-thalassemia major (β-TM).We aim to review various functional and structural ocular manifestations of β-TM patients in different studies and present the most important findings based on the prevalence and etiologies of each ocular complication.

To reach this purpose, we developed a search strategy using the keywords “eye disease,” “ocular complications,” “ocular manifestations,” and “ocular abnormality,” each with “beta-thalassemia” in the two popular search engines PubMed and Google Scholar up to December 2022. We also reviewed related references of the chosen papers.

According to the literature review, the most consistent is the correlation of β-TM with dry eye disease and fundus alterations, while there are still many challenges regarding the prevalence and etiologies of other ocular complications in β-TM patients.

This finding warrants studies with larger sample sizes to reach more reliable results and take them into action for preventing and timely diagnosing such ocular complications.