Pterygium — the wing-shaped fold of conjunctival tissue encroaching on the cornea — was the fifth subject of Dr. C. E. Gomperts’s eye survey of Groot-Atjeh in 1937, and was found in rather more than ten per cent of the men and about nine per cent of the women examined.
Findings
Gomperts drew five conclusions from his table of pterygium cases:
- that in both sexes the localisation of the pterygium was most often nasaal (on the nasal side), one-sided and two-sided alike, which agreed with the findings of other investigators;
- that pterygium was found in about nine per cent of the women examined and rather more than ten per cent of the men;
- that pterygium also occurred among children of both sexes, but rarely — the cases among children and young adults being in a very early stage, the head of the pterygium having crossed the limbus corneae by half a millimetre to at most one millimetre;
- that the nasal-temporal combination was more often seen than the temporal localisation alone, in one-sided as in two-sided cases, the difference being clearest in the two-sided, which argued somewhat for the general opinion that in nasal-temporal localisation the nasal pterygium develops first;
- that in the coastal area pterygium occurred less frequently than in the valley area.
The tabulated totals give 651 nasal cases (344 men, 307 women), 294 nasal-and-temporal, and 348 in the other combinations, among the 18,808 persons examined.
Age distribution
Gomperts’s closing summary records that pterygium occurred in the surveyed area of Groot-Atjeh “in vrij groote frequentie bij beide geslachten en hoofdzakelijk op den middelbaren- en ouden leeftijd” — in fairly great frequency in both sexes and chiefly in middle and old age.
Treatment
Pterygium was one of the two conditions Gomperts named — with cataract — for which patients received an admission note (opnamebriefje) for nursing in the Militair Hospitaal te Koetaradja, operative treatment not being undertaken in the villages.
See Also
- Oriënteerend oogheelkundig onderzoek bij de Atjehsche bevolking van Groot-Atjeh gedurende 1937
- C. E. Gomperts
- Militair Hospitaal te Koetaradja
- Groot-Atjeh
Source
Oriënteerend oogheelkundig onderzoek bij de Atjehsche bevolking van Groot-Atjeh gedurende 1937 (“Orienting Ophthalmological Survey among the Atjehnese Population of Groot-Atjeh during 1937”), by Dr. C. E. Gomperts, offprint from the Geneeskundig Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch-Indië, Afl. 19, Deel 80 (1940), pp. 1191-1238 (Batavia-Centrum: G. Kolff & Co.). Received by the editors 25 October 1939. Offprint DLP-157, Bibliotheek KITLV.