Volume 3 Issue 1 (January -February, 2017)

Original Articles

ASSESSMENT OF OUTCOME IN PATIENTS UNDERGOING CATARACT SURGERY- AN INSTITUTIONAL BASED STUDY
Dilshad Singh

Background: Cataract is the major cause of blindness and of severe visual impairment in many developing countries, leading to bilateral blindness in an estimated 20 million people worldwide. Increasing age is associated with an increasing prevalence of cataract. The main objective of the present study is to assess the outcome in patients undergoing cataract surgery. This is an institutional based study. Materials and methods: The study was conducted in the Department of Ophthalmology in the Institution. All the cases selected were aged 40 years and above. All the selected cases were studied thoroughly and details before and after the surgery were recorded. Patients that had surgery for traumatic cataracts were excluded from the study. Data of each patient was collected including age, gender, level of education (literate or illiterate), uncorrected and corrected distance visual acuity (UDV and CDVA) at presentation following up after one week of surgery and finally after 6 to 8wk of surgery, pre-existing eye disease, the preoperative, intra-operative, and postoperative findings and complications. Results: A total of 134 eyes in 120 patients were admitted with cataract surgery during the study period time.  In 132 patients with cataract, the average age was 64.12 +12 years with a range of 40-89 years. The number of patients was equal in male and female patients. In 60 eyes the right eye was operated, in 74 eyes the left eye was operated. Among 120 patients, 42 patients were literate and 90 patients were illiterate. Illiterate predominance significantly occurred in a range of 70-79y. Female had significantly higher rates of illiterate compared to male (X2=10.3, P=0.001). Conclusion: In summary, we reported the postoperative outcomes of cataract surgery. These surgeries were done with MSICS, a cost-effective procedure without phacoemulsification machine or sutures. It provides a good visual recovery in our samples but the vision outcome did not fulfill the standards proposed by WHO, which highlights the need for local socioeconomic understanding, population education for raising awareness about ocular illnesses, thorough preoperative assessment, standardizes training of surgical technique, supply of higher quality operating microscopes and IOLs, postoperative monitoring and very importantly audit of outcomes to ensure the highest possible quality of surgical service.
Keywords: Cataract, Operative complications, Visual outcome

 
Html View | Download PDF | Current Issue