Impact of local COVID-19 alert levels on rhegmatogenous retinal detachment

Abstract

Purpose To investigate the impact of the local alert levels regarding coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on the clinical patterns of rhegmatogenous retinal detachment (RRD) in Japan. Study design Retrospective, single-center, consecutive case series. Methods We compared two groups of RRD patients, a COVID-19 pandemic group and a control group. Based on the local alert levels in Nagano, five periods during the COVID-19 pandemic were further analyzed: epidemic 1 (state of emergency), inter-epidemic 1, epidemic 2 (second epidemic duration), inter-epidemic 2, and epidemic 3 (third epidemic duration). Patients’ characteristics, including symptoms’ duration before visiting our hospital, macula status, and retinal detachment (RD) recurrence rate in each period, were compared with those in a control group. Results There were 78 patients in the pandemic group and 208 in the control group. The pandemic group had a longer duration of symptoms than the control group (12.0 ± 13.5 days vs. 8.9 ± 14.7 days, P = 0.0045). During the epidemic 1 period, patients had a higher rate of macula-off RRD (71.4% vs. 48.6%) and RD recurrence (28.6% vs. 4.8%) than the control group. This period also demonstrated the highest rates compared to all other periods in the pandemic group. Conclusion During the COVID-19 pandemic, RRD patients significantly delayed visiting a surgical facility. They showed a higher rate of macula-off and recurrence compared to the control group during the state of emergency than during other periods of the COVID-19 pandemic, although the difference was not statistically significant due to the small sample size. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10384-023-00980-1.

Reproducibility of Portable OCT and Comparison with Conventional OCT

“…In our recent memory, there have been cases where patients were reluctant to visit hospitals due to the coronavirus pandemic, which prevented them from receiving appropriate treatment or caused them to miss the appropriate time for treatment [28][29][30]. If such a mobile OCT device is available, it will be possible to evaluate the presence or absence of disease and disease exacerbation, even in local hospitals or during house calls, which may lead to appropriate treatment.…”