Practice Patterns Of Canadian Ophthalmological Society Members In Cataract Surgery – Survey 2023

This was the fifteenth annual survey on the practice patterns of Canadian Ophthalmological Society (COS) members in cataract surgery.

Saskatchewan Health Authority, Saskatchewan, Canada.

 In January 2023, the COS office sent an email with a link to the survey on Red Cap to its 229 members whose primary focus was cataract surgery. Two reminders were sent at 2 weeks interval. The response rate was 23.6%. All responses were collected anonymously.

Most respondents (85.2%) corrected astigmatism at the time of cataract surgery. Most (93.5%) used a Toric IOL. 40.7% of the respondents aimed for monovision and the majority (31.8%) aimed for a difference of 1.5 D between the two eyes following cataract surgery. Presbyopia correcting lenses were used by 75.9% of the respondents. Intracameral antibiotics was used by 63% of the respondents in 2023 while only 42.9% did so in 2020. Immediately Sequential Bilateral Cataract Surgery (ISBCS) was performed by 48.1% of the respondents in 2023 while only 26% did so in 2020. Also of note, only 7.7% of the respondents performed ISBCS more than 50% of the time in 2020 while 19.2% did so in 2023.

There was a marked increase in respondents performing ISBCS and using intracameral antibiotics since the beginning of the COVID pandemic. The latter is probably because of the former. The COS leadership has been encouraging its members to perform ISBCS to reduce patient interaction during the pandemic.