Abstract
Hypercoagulability and thromboembolic abnormalities were observed in patients with coronavirus disease (COVID-19). COVID-19 has been suggested to cause retinal vascular damage. Uncertain associations of COVID-19 and its vaccines with retinal vascular occlusion (RVaO) were previously published. We believe that big data are needed for analysis of the association of RVaO and COVID-19. TriNetX is a federated cloud-based health research network providing access to anonymized, deidentified patient-specific electronic health records of >100 million patients from >70 healthcare organizations, which majority were located in the United States of America. Our team conducted thorough literature search on 31st May 2023 via PubMed, MEDLINE, EMBASE, Scopus, Web of Science on TriNetx related studies concerning RVaO and COVID-19. Big data studies were only available in May 2023. We summarized the results of the two TriNetX big data studies in table and text. Li et al. study showed no significant risk of RVaO at 12 weeks after vaccinations for each individual type of COVID-19 vaccine, no matter the mRNA or viral vector-based vaccines studied. However, when analyses were done with all brands of vaccines mixed together, there were increased risk at every bi-weekly time points up to 12 weeks. Dorney et al. study found no increased risk of RVaO by receiving the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines when compared to Influenza or Tdap vaccines. However, COVID-19 infection has a higher risk (4.25 times) of RVaO than COVID-19 vaccinations. Our review compared the similarities and differences on the two currently available TriNetX big data literature on the association of RVaO and COVID-19 vaccinations. These studies have different comparison groups, and possible limitations on the study design as we discussed in the main text. Despite they are not presenting directly conflicting results, further meta-analysis or other epidemiologic studies would be needed to answer the scientific question on the association of RVaO and COVID-19.