Survey: Residents have 'suboptimal' experience with vitreoretinal surgical procedures

Ophthalmology. 2009;116(4):783-789.

A little more than half of third-year ophthalmology residents said they had performed a vitrectomy as the primary surgeon, and even fewer said they had performed a scleral buckle procedure, according to a survey.

Of 287 total residents, 59% said they were at least "fairly comfortable" in knowing the theoretical steps for vitreoretinal surgery and 55.4% said they were at least "fairly satisfied" with their training. Additionally, 72% of respondents to the self-report survey were not aware of how many surgeries they should be performing in their residency, as mandated by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME).

According to current ACGME guidelines, residents should perform a minimum of 86 cataract cases, five glaucoma filtering surgeries, one vitreoretinal surgery and 25 other retinal cases. The study authors said that vitreoretinal surgery experience was "suboptimal" and may play a role in whether residents continue on to retinal fellowships.

In the survey, 59.1% of respondents said they had performed a vitrectomy, and 40.8% said they had performed a scleral buckle.

Despite the modest experience with surgeries in the survey, there was a high level of experience with office-based procedures, such as intravitreal injections (96.7%), macular laser therapy (94.8%) and panretinal photocoagulation (99.6%).