Consent process in refractive surgery: comparison of in-person vs telemedicine approach

Session Details

Session Title: Vision & Accommodation Assessment

Session Date/Time: Monday 24/09/2018 | 14:00-16:00

Paper Time: 14:42

Venue: Room A3, Podium 2

First Author: : S.Hannan UK

Co Author(s): :    D. Teenan                    

Abstract Details

Purpose:

To compare patient's perception of consent quality between patients who had in person consent discussion and those who had a remote (telephone) discussion with their treating surgeon.

Setting:

Optical Express, Glasgow, UK

Methods:

This retrospective study included 4,940 laser vision correction (LVC) patients and 1,668 refractive lens exchange (RLE) patients who attended 1-day and 1-months postoperative examination and completed a patient experience questionnaire. Preoperatively, all patient underwent a thorough examination and discussion with a trained refractive optometrist and watched a video consent. Patient’s then had a choice to either meet their treating surgeon in person (‘in-clinic’ group) or have a telephone discussion with him (‘remote’ group). Preoperative and postoperative clinical outcomes and questionnaire outcomes were compared between the two groups of patients.

Results:

Preoperatively, 82.1% of LVC and 56.8% RLE patients chose to have a remote discussion. Patients who opted for in-clinic discussion were older and had higher refractive errors. One month postoperatively, 97.1% of ‘in-clinic’ LVC patients and 98.4% of ‘remote’ LVC patients indicated they were satisfied with consent process (p=0.02). In RLE group, the percentage of patients satisfied with consent quality was 98.3% for both, ‘in-clinc’ and ‘remote’ group (p=0.98). Patients who indicated they were not consented properly were those who had poor outcome, were dissatisfied with vision or experienced significant visual phenomena or dry eye.

Conclusions:

Majority of refractive patients preferred a remote discussion with their treating surgeon. Satisfaction with consent quality was high and remote surgeon discussion is a viable option for patients who underwent prior consultation with a refractive optometrist and watched a video consent.

Financial Disclosure:

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