Cataract surgery audit at an Australian urban teaching hospital

Abstract

Background: To provide local data on visual acuity and surgical outcomes for cataract surgery performed in an Australian teaching hospital. Design: Continuous audit over 7 years in a public teaching hospital. Participants: A total of 3740 eyes had cataract surgery performed at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, South Australia, from May 2006 to September 2013. Methods: Visual acuity and complication rates were recorded for cataract surgery cases operated on between May 2006 and September 2013 on a digital database with data entry contemporaneous with final follow-up. Main Outcome Measures: Visual acuity and surgical complications. Results: Of the patients, 91.4% achieved postoperative best-measured vision better than preoperative best-measured vision. The rate of posterior capsular tear was 2.59%, endophthalmitis was 0.11% and the overall complication rate was 11.7%. Conclusions: This audit is the first to document modern cataract surgery, overwhelmingly dominated by phacoemulsification in an Australian population and can be used to benchmark cataract surgery outcome in an urban Australian population.