Office-based surgery offers several advantages for patients
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WAIKOLOA, Hawaii — Office-based surgery is quickly gaining momentum and may become the new standard of care for cataract surgery.
“By bringing cataract surgery into your practice, you can seamlessly integrate clinic and surgery in one location, providing the next level of safety and unmatched patient care,” I. Paul Singh, MD, said at Hawaiian Eye 2022.
Office-based surgery offers more comfort for patients. They are in a more familial environment where they know the staff and the staff knows them better. In Singh’s experience, this has led to a significantly lower need for sedation.
“In fact, 20% of our patients now have zero sedation, and the majority only use a small dose of Valium,” he said. “With oral sedation, patients are much more cooperative, they are not disoriented, and we can communicate with them very well.”
Safety has been a question mark for many colleagues, but a large data set published in 2016 by Kaiser Permanente showed no cases of endophthalmitis in 21,000 surgeries.
As far as costs are concerned, with no anesthesia fee, the cost for the patient is equal to or less than the 20% copay at ASCs.
Singh offers a wide number of surgeries at his center.
“We do cataract and refractive surgery, MIGS procedures including subconjunctival MIGS surgery, DSEK, DMEK and eyelid surgery. So, it’s not just for cataract, and you also can build through your YAG capsulotomy and LPI and other laser procedures,” he said.
One of the advantages he most appreciates is the freedom to acquire the most updated technologies.
“This was one of the main reasons why we wanted to build an office surgical suite, although we do have an ASC and we do surgery at the hospital. Having full control of what technology you want to buy or try out is invaluable. In our center, we can benefit from the latest phaco machines, femto, intraoperative OCT and a 3-D heads-up display,” Singh said.
Three-dimensional surgical visualization has been an asset for training his staff and has raised their level of understanding of what happens during procedures, something they like and appreciate, he said.
COVID has brought about major paradigm changes. Patients may be afraid to go to hospitals and ASCs.
“They feel much safer in our office setting, and this has minimized the impact of COVID on our patient volume and revenue,” Singh said.
Reference:
- Ianchulev T, et al. Ophthalmology. 2016;doi:10.1016/j.ophtha.2015.12.020.
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Singh IP. Office-based surgery – What’s the real scoop. Presented at: Hawaiian Eye; Jan. 15-21, 2022; Waikoloa, Hawaii.
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