Lucia Gonzalez-Buendia¹, Jorge Ruiz-Medrano¹, María García-Zamora¹, Ignacio Flores-Moreno¹ and José M Ruiz-Moreno^1,2*

¹Department of Ophthalmology, Puerta de Hierro-Majadahonda University Hospital, Madrid, Spain
²Department of Ophthalmology, Castilla La Mancha University, Albacete, Spain

*Corresponding Author: José M Ruiz-Moreno, Department of Ophthalmology, Puerta de Hierro-Majadahonda University Hospital, Madrid, Spain.

Received: January 18, 2022; Published: March 29, 2022

Abstract

Purpose: To evaluate the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown on ophthalmology practice and evaluate the recovery of activity after this period.

Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed with data collected from Puerta de Hierro- Majadahonda University Hospital administrative services. Number of outpatient visits, emergency room (ER) visits, surgeries and intravitreal injections were analyzed.

Results: Total number of outpatient visits, retina visits and ER visits fell significantly during the lockdown compared with prepandemic data (P = 0.0007, P = 0.0009 and P < 0.0001, respectively), but no significant differences were observed after this period compared to prepandemic data. Similarly, a significant decline in total number of surgeries was observed during the lockdown (P = 0.0005) but after no differences were found. Number of retina surgeries dropped during the lockdown (P = 0.0021) and remained low after (P = 0.0056). We found no significant differences in number of weekly intravitreal injections throughout the pandemic.

Conclusion: A reduction on number of visits and surgeries was observed during the lockdown, but after this period there were no differences compared to prepandemic data. Remarkably, although reduced, no statistically significant differences were found regarding number of intravitreal injections during the lockdown.

Keywords: COVID-19; Pandemic; Lockdown; Retina; Medical Practice; Intravitreal Injection

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Citation

Citation: José M Ruiz-Moreno., et al. “Impact of COVID-19 Lockdown in Ophthalmologic Care and Subsequent Restoration of Clinical and Surgical Activity".Acta Scientific Ophthalmology 5.4 (2022): 77-82.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2022 José M Ruiz-Moreno., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.