Nasolacrimal Duct Probing for Young Children With Congenital Nasolacrimal Duct Obstructions in China: A 10-Year Systematic Review

Purpose: To investigate the success rate of probing for young children with nasolacrimal duct obstructions and the risk factors involved. Methods: The medical records of 3,143 patients (3,928 eyes) who received nasolacrimal duct probing in southwest China were collected. These included delivery method, age and gender, preoperative treatments, anesthesia methods, probing procedure, and follow-up clinical records. Then the relationship between the success rates of the probing and a few probable risk factors were analyzed. Results: Children delivered by eutocia were more likely than those delivered by cesarean section to have nasolacrimal duct obstruction. The total success rate of the probing was 85.2%. Patients older than 19 months had a lower completion rate compared with those younger than 1 year ( P < .01). In the follow-up observations, the younger age groups were more likely to have higher success rates than the older ones ( P < .05) using pairwise comparison. The success rates also had a significant relationship with the type of obstruction and older patients were more likely to have complex obstruction (odds ratio: 1.13, 95% confidence interval: 1.08 to 1.19, P < .001). Conclusions: This large-scale study proved several factors affect the success rate of nasolacrimal duct probing, and confirmed children delivered by eutocia were more likely to have nasolacrimal duct obstruction. [ J Pediatr Ophthalmol Strabismus . 2019;56(6):365–372.]