Pattern of otorhinolaryngological cases seen in an eye clinic in Port Harcourt, Nigeria

This study was carried out to review the pattern of ENT cases seen in the eye clinic of a tertiary hospital. This was a 5 - year retrospective review of patients’ hospital records who presented to the eye clinic primarily or through referral from the ENT c linic of University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospi tal from January 2006 through December 2010. 43 cases w ere seen during the period under review of the 24,000 cases seen in the clinic during this period. The age range was 4 months to 78 years with a mean age of 35.9 ± 17.2 years. There male: female ratio was almost equal (0.9:1). The five most common ENT diseases where acute otitis media (40.8%), chronic suppurative otitis media (11.6%), facial nerve pals y (11.6%), nasopharyngeal carcinoma (11.5%), sinonasa l carcinoma (6.9%), while the five most common ophthalmic pathologies in these group of patients w ere Facial nerve palsy (20.9%), headache (9.3%), proptosis (9.3%), ptosis (9.3%) and epiphora (6.9%) .The pattern of otorhinolaryngological diseases see n in the eye clinic has been shown by this study. Th e findings from this study brings to the fore the common pathologies likely to be encountered in the two medical fields and would guide the clinician in their management of these patients.