Abstract
Purpose :
The COVID-19 pandemic has been shown to impact many specialties including ophthalmology. We aim to study the impact of the pandemic on volume and characteristics of surgical cases in pediatric retinal detachments (RDs).
Methods :
We performed a retrospective chart review of pediatric patients ≤18 years old who had RD surgery between March 13, 2019 and March 12, 2020 compared to those who had RD surgery between March 13, 2020 and March 12, 2021 at a single academic institution. March 12, 2020 was the day that the national emergency for the COVID-19 pandemic was instated. Variables of age, time to surgery, etiology, acuity, and genetic or systemic disease were collected. Groups were compared using t-test or chi-squared tests with p<0.05 considered statistically significant.
Results :
Twenty-six eyes underwent surgery for RDs between March 13, 2019 and March 12, 2020, while 25 eyes underwent surgery for RDs between March 13, 2020 and March 12, 2021, which is a 3.8% reduction. While there was no significant difference in age of patients operated on between pre-pandemic and during the pandemic (9.4±5.2 vs 8.3±6.2 years old, p=0.48), the distribution of age trended toward the extremes during the pandemic (Figure 1).
RD types pre-pandemic and during the pandemic were 19 and 15 rhegmatogenous RDs (RRD) (Figure 2), 5 and 8 tractional RDs (TRD), 2 and 1 combined RRDs and TRDs, 0 and 1 serous RDs respectively. Case acuity was similar in pre-pandemic cases compared to during the pandemic (10 vs 11 acute, 16 vs 14 chronic, p=0.67).
There was no difference in time from preoperative appointment to surgery when comparing pre-pandemic and pandemic cases (15.7±22.7 vs 9.8±13.3 days, p=0.27). There is also no difference when isolating acute RDs (3.5±4.2 vs 2.8±2.0 days, p=0.63) or chronic RDs (23.3±26.2 vs 15.2±15.9 days, p=0.33)
There was a trend toward pre-pandemic cases having more trauma-related RDs than during the pandemic (10 eyes (38.4%) vs 6 eyes (24%), p=0.27). There was no difference in eyes with genetic or systemic predisposition to RDs (pre-pandemic: 15 eyes vs pandemic: 16 eyes, p=0.64).
Conclusions :
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, pediatric case volume was minimally reduced, and time to surgery was not significantly altered, unlike what has been previously described in other ophthalmologic procedures in adults.
This abstract was presented at the 2023 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in New Orleans, LA, April 23-27, 2023.