Purpose:
To characterize surgical times of cataract surgery performed by ophthalmologists in training at the VA Tennessee Valley Health Care Systems in Nashville.
Methods:
Retrospective review of surgical times from the surgical database at VA Tennessee Valley Health Care System at Nashville, TN. All cataract surgeries performed by residents starting after 7/1/1999, who completed 3 years of training prior to 6/30/2005 were analyzed. Initial 60 surgeries for each of the residents during the above stated period were compared with descriptive analysis and with Wilcoxon two–sided test.
Results:
18 residents had completed 3 years of training from 7/1/1999 until 6/30/2005. Two residents had surgical time data missing and were excluded from this analysis. Surgical time analysis for residents as a group: The percentile calculations were performed grouping all residents. Surgical times were analyzed across groups of 10 surgeries in chronological order. These results are included in the chart below. Wilcoxon two–sided test was performed comparing contiguous time groups. This showed statistically significant difference between all contiguous groups (p<0.05) except for the group containing surgical numbers 31–40 compared to the group that included surgical numbers 41–50 (p=0.70). Surgical time analysis for residents individually: 15 out of 16 residents had statistically significant shorter surgical time from the 41st–50th surgery when compared to the 1st–10th surgery (p<0.05) using the Wilcoxon two–sided test.
Conclusions:
This study characterizes surgical times of ophthalmologists in training performing cataract surgery at the VA Tennessee Valley Health Care Systems. There is a definitive trend toward shorter duration of surgical procedure with more surgeries performed.
Keywords: training/teaching cataract surgery