Central corneal thickness of Pakistani adults

Objective: To determine the average central corneal thickness (CCT) of healthy adults in the ophthalmology clinic of a tertiary care hospital of Pakistan. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study conducted in the ophthalmology clinics of Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi Pakistan. One hundred normal subjects (200 eyes) were studied. An ultrasound pachymeter was used to measure CCT. Results: The mean (±SD) age of the study population was 44.29 ± 15.18 years with a median of 47 years (range: 16-73). Twenty three percent of the subjects had diabetes mellitus, 29% hypertension and 6% had history of ischaemic heart disease. The mean (SD) CCT measurements were 531.08 ± 33.37) and 531.29 ± 33.33 micrometers in the right and left eyes respectively and were not significantly different from each other. There was no statistically significant correlation between CCT and IOP (r = 0.158, p = 0.12). We did not find a significant association between CCT and other independent variables like age, sex, presence of co-morbidity i.e. Diabetes Mellitus (DM), Hypertension (HTN), Ischaemic Heart Disease (IHD), myopia, hypermetropia, systemic and eye medication use. Conclusions: The average CCT values obtained in the hospital-based study closely match those of the African Americans. A population-based study would be needed to provide unbiased CCT estimate in Pakistani population.