This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Lack of data on cataract surgical outcomes dampens improvement efforts in Pacific Islands
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
NUSA DUA, Indonesia — Despite efforts to improve cataract surgical outcomes, the western Pacific Islands region is being hampered by the lack of outcomes record-keeping by many surgeons there, according to a presenter.
"How are we doing in the western Pacific? We really don't know," Garry Brian, MD, said in a presentation here at the joint meeting of the Asia-Pacific Academy of Ophthalmology and the American Academy of Ophthalmology. Dr. Brian delivered the presentation on behalf of John Szetu, MD, the primary researcher.
The region itself is comprised of more than 8 million people and 40,000 cataract blind and Dr. Barry said there are 26 resident physicians in the region trained in ophthalmology. Expatriate visiting doctors doing outreach account for a large number of cataract surgeries performed in the region, he said.
The resident physicians may feel attempts to monitor their outcomes are inspections, which agreed to some extent, and this may prevent those doctors from monitoring their own outcomes closely. The visiting surgeons routinely do not keep outcome records, he added.
The reasons for the lack of record keeping were not a lack of effort on the part of surgeons there, but Dr. Brian noted that the study found the highest volume surgeons with better outcomes maintained better records as well.
The solution to the problem may reside in training the more than 70 nurses and ophthalmic technicians to begin keeping better outcomes data, he said.