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Telephone consultation for post-cataract surgery in the south-east Asian population: feasibility, safety and patient acceptance

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First Author: R.Husain SINGAPORE

Co Author(s):    G. Wu   J. Tan   C. Sim   A. Aw   H. Low        

Abstract Details

Purpose:

To investigate the feasibility and patients’ acceptance to telephone follow up (TFU) after uncomplicated cataract surgery.

Setting:

Tertiary Ophthalmic Hospital in Singapore (Singapore National Eye Centre)

Methods:

A retrospective analysis was performed on low risk uncomplicated post-cataract surgical patients. All were seen on day one post operatively to ensure they met the criteria for telephone follow up and did not have any exclusion criteria. The traditional one week post operative follow up of uncomplicated cataract surgical patients was replaced by a phone call following a standardised script . Two full time senior ophthalmic nurses made the calls and recorded the patients’ responses. . All patients were seen again at 1 month post surgery, regardless of responses to the telephone call.

Results:

A Total of 14403 patients underwent TFU from June 2016 to March 2019.They were operated by 88 qualified specialists. Age of patients ranged from 15.7 years old to 100.5 years old. The mean age was 68.7 years old and the median age 69.2 years old. 57.4 % were female and 42.6 % were male.The majority of patients were Chinese race (84.6 % ) , and the rest were Malay (7.1 % ), Indian (5.6%), others ( 2.7 % ). All except 4 patients were contactable by telephone. No patients returned to the clinic with serious treatable eye conditions during the study period. Only 5 patients were asked by the nurse to return to the clinic based on the responses to the questions. A sample of the participants reported high acceptability to the scheme on questionnaire

Conclusions:

Replacing the one week post cataract surgery visit with a nurse-led telephone call was found to be safe and cost effective compared to standard care (for routine uncomplicated cases). Patient acceptability was high.

Financial Disclosure:

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