Endophthalmitis rates and risk factors following intraocular surgeries: can we turn big-data benchmarks into patient benefit?

Chen et al present a study exploring postoperative endophthalmitis rates from the US Medicare Population from 2016 to 2019.1 They present postoperative infection rates for a range of intraocular procedures which are potentially very valuable for the process of informed consent, as well as functioning as benchmarks to permit individual departments to audit their own endophthalmitis rates. However, the utility of their estimates for these purposes is dependent on how generalisable the data are felt to be in other settings. Prior to 2006 national surveillance systems, systematic reviews and meta-analyses consistently reported rates of postcataract surgery endophthalmitis of around 1 in 700 (0.13%–0.15%).2 3 The landmark 2006 randomised controlled trial demonstrating the effectiveness of prophylactic intracameral antibiotics4 has subsequently been corroborated by observational real-world data from health systems using intracameral antibiotics as standard, such that one case is now expected per...
Source: British Journal of Ophthalmology - Category: Opthalmology Authors: Tags: Commentaries Source Type: research