Abstract
Purpose :
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a respiratory virus that initially appeared in Wuhan, China in December of 2019. It quickly spread around the globe with the World Health Organization declaring the outbreak a pandemic on March 11, 2020. With rapidly changing national and global guidelines researchers at Temple University (Philadelphia, PA) surveyed ophthalmologists across the United States to examine their response to the pandemic during the months of April 2020 to July 2020.
Methods :
The survey is a population based, cross-sectional study. Participants were identified on April 21, 2020 with the “Find an Ophthalmologist” feature on the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s website allowing for random retrieval of contact information across the 50 states, ensuring a random sampling of participants by state and general demographics. We distributed the survey via email with responses collected between April and July 2020. We sent 2,299 emails and collected 147 responses (response rate of 6%). Results were compiled and analyzed using the Google Survey Tool.
Results :
Ophthalmologists of every specialty, practice type, and geographic region responded. Patient visits across the country fell with 41.8% of respondents seeing less than 25% of their usual volume. Only 20.5% of ophthalmology practices were seeing 26-50% of their patients, 12.3% of practices were seeing 51-75% of patients, and 11.6% of practices were still seeing 76-100% of their patients; 13.7% of ophthalmology practices saw no patients at all. The most common changes implemented were physicians and staff masking (97.29%), decreasing ancillary staff (96.66%), patients masking (95.24%), and cleaning rooms between patients (91.84%). In the office, 61.0% of respondents implemented telemedicine software with another 47.1% indicating they plan to use telehealth at a later date. In our survey, 42.9% of respondents indicated they were performing elective procedures with 68% of respondents stating surgical masks were appropriate for short, low risk procedures compared to 80% of respondents stating N95 was most appropriate for high risk, short cases of less than one-hour duration.
Conclusions :
The majority of respondents followed national trends and adhered to CDC and AAO recommendations. Significant financial burden and unpredictable viral trends further emphasize the importance of continual monitoring and adherence to established guidelines.
This is a 2021 ARVO Annual Meeting abstract.