Hasenin Al-khersan, M. Kalavar, Rebecca E. Tanenbaum, T. Lazzarini, Nimesh A Patel, Nicolas A. Yannuzzi, J. Sridhar, J. Townsend, A. Berrocal, Zubair A. Ansari
American Journal of Ophthalmology, 2020
Purpose To characterize the delivery of emergent ophthalmic surgical care during April 2020 of the COVID-19 pandemic compared with the same time interval the year prior. Design Retrospective, observational before-and-after study Methods Review and characterization of each emergent/urgent procedure performed during April 2020 and April 2019 at a single tertiary ophthalmology referral center. Information collected included the details of patient presentation, diagnosis, surgical procedure, and preoperative COVID-19 testing. Results In total, 117 surgical procedures were performed on 114 patients during the month of April 2020 compared with 1,107 performed in April 2019 (p< 0.0001). Retinal detachment repair was the most common procedure (37, 31.6%) in April 2020 while elective cataract surgery (481, 47.3%) was most common in April 2019. The mean age of patients was 50.0 years in April of 2020 compared to 59.0 years (p<0.0001) the year prior. During April 2020, the mean age of surgeons performing procedures was 42.3 years compared to 48.4 years (p<0.0001) during April 2019. In April 2020, all but 5 patients (96%) had RT-PCR based COVID-19 testing prior to their procedure. One patient (0.88%) had a positive COVID-19 test. Conclusions The COVID-19 pandemic decreased our institution’s surgical volume in April 2020 to approximately 10% of the usual volume. The pandemic changed the type of cases performed and led to a statistically significant decrease in both the age of our surgeons and patients relative to the same interval in the year prior. Broad preoperative screening led to one positive COVID-19 test in an asymptomatic patient.
Cited by 11 publications.
Field of study: Medicine