European Cataract Outcome Study – Results of Five Years of Participation

Overview

Goal:
To inform about European Cataract Outcome Study and to publish resultsfrom the Department of Ophthalmology, Faculty Hospital in Hradec Královéachieved during the five years’ participation.Method, groups: European Cataract Outcome Study is an international multicentricstudy pursuing quality of cataract surgery in individual departments ofEuropean countries. Its goal is to monitor the development of new trends and tobehelpful in setting standardsusingthecollecteddata.TheStudyevaluates resultsof all surgeries performed during one month. Our department participated in itin the years 1998 – 2002. In the first part of the trial the basic demographic dataas well as the course of the surgeries were followed, in the second part results ofexamination during the first six months after the surgery were collected.Results: Operations are mostly performed by means of the facoemulsificationmethod in local anesthesia (subconjunctival or parabulbar), the stay in hospitalvaries in individual years between 35.1 % and 56 %, the percentage of implantedfoldable (soft) intraocular lenses rises every year, in 2002 up to 61.5 % (average ofthe whole study was 78.2 % in 2002), the percentage of posterior lens capsulerupture during the procedure during the five year period in our departmentdescends (range 3.7 % to 1.2 %). In the referred groups, 40.4 % to 50.5 % of eyessuffered from still another disease. The best corrected visual acuity 0.6 or betterafter the surgery achieved in individual years 64 % to 78 %. The deviation from planed refraction is between 0.69 to 0.88 diopters. The induced postoperativeastigmatism varied in followed periods from 0.49 to 0.69 cylindrical diopters.Conclusion: The results of the study shows that the quality of surgeries performedin the department is on the high level and is fully comparable with contemporaryEuropean standard.

Key words:
cataract, European Cataract Outcome Study