Environmental Impact Of Patient Travel For Macula Degeneration Clinic
Published 2026 - 44th Congress of the ESCRS
Reference: POSUS001 | Type: Free paper | DOI: 10.82333/x6mx-ed13
Authors: Ms Kavita Aggarwal* 1 , Peter Davey 2 , Otiti Obon 3 , Mandeep Bindra 4
1Buckinghamahire NHS Trust,Ayelsbury,United Kingdom, 2Consultant in public health,Manchester,United Kingdom, 3FY2,London,United Kingdom, 4Consultant Ophthalmoloigst,Ayelsbury,United Kingdom
Purpose
The climate crisis is a health crisis. Climate change is the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century. We need to think about Net Zero Eyecare now to protect the future. Eyecare is one of the highest throughput outpatient specialities in the NHS, seeing 23million patients annually. Any small changes to reduce carbon could have a big impact on carbon reductions more widely. Patient travel accounted for 77% of emissions for AMD injections vs 10.1% for cataract surgery. The aim of this project is to capture patient’s travel preferences to an age-related macula degeneration clinic in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom.
Setting
Single setting community hospital in the United Kingdom.
Methods
All patients attending the age-related macula degeneration clinic on a single day will have travel data collected prospectively at the time of their appointments. This data will be extrapolated to compare against the National NHS dataset (SUS).
Results
A total of 39 participants will be included in this study with a mean age of 86.3 years. 33% were men and 100% were white British in ethnicity. The mean distance to clinic was 13.52 miles range(2.20-32.14 miles). Of those attending, 89.4% travelled by car with the majority of cars being petrol or diesel. Only 1 car was electric with 4 being hybrid. Of those who drove, only 8.6% self drove to the appointment whilst the others were driven by carers, relatives or friends. This meant that an additional 58.55 miles were driven by carers resuting in 23.4 kg of CO2.
Conclusions
Ophthalmology is a unique speciality where patients often have poor vision, dilating drops and interventons including injection treatment at the time of the appointment meaning that they are unable to drive themselves to their appointments. This means that even though patients live close to the community hospital, they often need a carer to bring them to the appointment. This is the only study that highlights the additional carbon footprint from carers travelling to patients appointments and the preference for car travel for all patients in this setting.