Profile of patients presenting for cataract surgery in the UK: national data collection

Abstract

Aims/methods-A national data collection exercise was carried out in more than 100 hospital eye service units within the UK to provide clinical and administrative information on patients undergoing cataract surgery. This included patient clinical data such as visual acuity at the time of wait listing and at the time of admission for surgery, presence of other eye disorders, other serious medical disorders, and data on waiting time and type of admission. Results-The profiles of the 18 454 patients aged 50 years or older are reported. Findings of particular note were as follows. At the time of wait listing for cataract surgery 31% had visual acuity of 6/12 or better, 54% had visual acuity between 6/18 and 6/60, and 15% had less than 6/60 vision. Considering those who had visual acuity of 6/12 or better at the time of wait listing, by the time of admission for surgery, the vision deteriorated to 6/18-6/60 in 33% and in a further 3% the vision deteriorated to below 6/60. In patients with moderately poor visual acuity (<6/12-6/60) at the time of wait listing, 13% had less than 6/60 vision by the time of admission for surgery. Conclusion-This type of data collection and reporting exercise provides new material that can be used in the planning and provision of cataract surgery services in the UK. (Br J Ophthalmol 1999;83:893-896)

Influence of age on conjunctival bacteria of patients undergoing cataract surgery

“…As the number of people who undergo cataract surgery after 75 years has increased in the last 20 years, [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] we compared the conjunctival bacteria of our patients aged 3-74 years with those aged 75-96 years, which is the main purpose of this study. A w 2 test was calculated for each conjunctival bacteria category in both age-groups.…”

“…We analyse the preoperative conjunctival bacteria of a big sample of patients who underwent cataract extraction in our hospital; 18 stratifying the data from this study 18 according to the age we describe the frequency of these bacteria in age-groups, similar to the age-groups in the Desai et al study, 1,12 in order to ascertain the effect of age in the preoperative conjunctival flora.…”

“…[8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] For these reasons we study the preoperative conjunctival bacteria of patients undergoing cataract surgery at different stages of age. These bacteria are the main source of contamination of intraocular surgery, 16,17 and it is possible that sometimes bacteria produce inflammation that could be treated without developing infectious postsurgical endophthalmitis; but it could damage ocular tissues as well.…”

The Cataract National Dataset Electronic Multi-centre Audit of 55 567 operations: anaesthetic techniques and complications

“…2 This marked improvement in throughput and efficiency has been made possible by the almost universal switch to day case phacoemulsification surgery under local anaesthesia (LA). The use of local anaesthetic techniques has risen from 46% in 1990 1 to 86% in 1997 3 and 96% in 2003. 4 There have also been major changes in the local anaesthetic techniques used, with peribulbar and retrobulbar being used in 65.6 and 16.9% of cases, respectively, in the 1996 5 survey, falling to 30.6-47.7 and 0.8-3.5%, respectively, in 2003; 4,6 subtenons anaesthesia increasing from 6.7 to 16.8-42.6% and topical anaesthesia increasing from 2.9 to 9.9-33.3% over the same time period.…”

The Bristol cataract listing survey: Profile of listed patients with visual acuity 6/12 or better

“…However, in the UK National Cataract Survey of 1998, 33% of patients who were listed for cataract surgery had a visual acuity of 6/12 or better. 1 It is well recognised that visual impairment secondary to cataract cannot be adequately described in terms of a single loss of visual function. 2 In some instances, (high contrast) VA can be reasonably well preserved in the presence of symptomatic visually impairing cataract, but most British ophthalmologists use other visual tests infrequently.…”