Purpose: The Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada's (VKH) Disease Committee established the "Revised diagnostic criteria for VKH disease" in 2001. The purpose of the present study was to assess the concordance between these criteria and the traditional Sugiura's diagnosis system.
Design: Observational case series.
Methods: The medical records of patients previously diagnosed with VKH disease based upon Sugiura's criteria at the Uveitis Survey Clinic of the Hokkaido University Hospital between 1991 and 2003 were retrospectively reevaluated using the VKH Committee's revised diagnostic criteria for VKH disease.
Results: Sugiura's criteria were used to identify 169 patients with VKH disease. All patients were Japanese, and 95 cases (56%) were women. Mean age at the time of their first visit to our clinic was 44.7 +/- 13.9 years (range, 9 to 74 years). Using the VKH Committee's new criteria, 91.7% of the previously diagnosed VKH patients were classified as having the disease. Of this group, 11.8% were classified as complete, 71% incomplete, and 8.9% as probable VKH disease.
Conclusions: The VKH Committee's revised diagnostic criteria proved useful for VKH disease diagnosis, as the concordance rate for the two criteria was more than 90%. However, patients who had prior cataract surgery or who lacked signs of serous retinal detachment were not classified as having VKH disease because of exclusion by the VKH Committee's new criteria.