Abstract
Purpose :
To describe trends in demographics and practice patterns of a group of young retina specialists over a five-year follow-up period (2017-2022).
Methods :
An anonymous survey of demographic and preferred practice patterns was sent to members of the American Retina Forum on a social media platform between August and September 2022. These results were compared to a similar survey performed in 2017.
Results :
In 2022, the survey population included 358 members with 101 respondents compared to the 2017 survey which included 44 respondents. The 2022 mean age was 38.7 and mean number of years in practice was 5.9. The majority of respondents preferred intravitreal bevacizumab as first-line treatment for foveal-involving diabetic macular edema (60%), vein occlusions (54%), and wet age-related macular degeneration (56%). Aflibercept was a more popular choice in first-line diabetic macular edema patients with poor vision (51% or 51/101) compared to those with good vision (18% or 18/101). In cases of proliferative diabetic retinopathy without macular edema, most respondents prefer panretinal photocoagulation alone (43% or 43/101) or in combination with an injection (48% or 48/101) over injection alone (10% or 10/101). Surgical retina respondents estimated that they repaired rhegmatogenous retinal detachments with combined vitrectomy-buckle 20% of the time, primary scleral buckle 10%, and pneumatic retinopexy (PR) 10%. The percentage of respondents who used PR 0% of the time decreased from 41.5% to 13.3% between 2017 to 2022. The majority of surgical retina respondents (72% or 69/96) preferred scleral-fixed lenses with an equal distribution of scleral-sutured and scleral tunneled, non-sutured lenses over other secondary IOL placement methods. From 2017 to 2022, a larger proportion of respondents use masks when performing injections from 29.5% to 82.8%, respectively. Also in 2022, a smaller minority of respondents use topical gel anesthesia (34.1% vs 15.5%) and a larger proportion use post-injection antibiotics (2.3% vs 16.0%).
Conclusions :
Survey results from before and after the start of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic suggest that more providers are more likely observe good visual acuity in diabetic edema and shift towards laser alone in proliferative disease without edema. In addition, post-pandemic trends show increased use of PR, masks and post-injection antibiotics, and decreased use of topical gel anesthesia.
This abstract was presented at the 2023 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in New Orleans, LA, April 23-27, 2023.