Don’t Forget the Eye in ICU

High-risk groups such as those with signs of acute hemorrhagic ocular disease could benefit from routine screening, since these types of conditions increase the risk for death. Photo: Jarett Mazzarella, OD. Click image to enlarge. Compared to immediately life-threatening conditions, eyes aren’t usually the priority in intensive care units. However, a paper recently published in BMJ Ophthalmology suggests that taking eye health into consideration could provide a better picture of a patient’s risk for serious illness and even mortality.The retrospective study included data from the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care IV (MIMIC-IV) database, and the researchers used statistical modeling to identify the importance of factors for one-year mortality and in-hospital mortality. Overall, the retrospective analysis included 40,149 patients. Of these patients, 1.0% had acute ocular diseases; 6.38% had chronic ocular diseases; 2.36% had neurological ocular diseases; and 0.06% had traumatic ocular diseases.The researchers determined that individuals with acute disease had significantly higher proportions of acute kidney injury (76.8%), intensive mechanical ventilation (51.9%), norepinephrine (23.4%), neuro block (5%), sedation (59.6%) and sepsis (59.6%) than those without. For advice on triaging retinal hemorrhages, see this article. They also reported different trends among those with and without chronic eye diseases. Those with chronic disease had significantly higher one-year mortality after ICU admission than those without. Acute non-traumatic hemorrhagic ocular disease was independently linked to higher in-hospital mortality among ICU patients with acute ocular complications.Based on these findings, the researchers determined that “the presence of ocular diseases was linked to increased long-term mortality.” They believe these associations may serve as important clinical indicators.Click here for the journal source. Gao C, Lou J, Hu Y, et al. Ocular diseases and their association with mortality in intensive care unit patients: a retrospective cohort study from the MIMIC-IV database. BMJ Ophthalmol 2026. [Epub January 20, 2026].  This article was developed by the editorial staff in conjunction with experts in the field. In the process, AI may have been among the editorial tools used to meet the goals of human editors, who approved all content.