Colleges' come together on cataracts

Recommendations on routine cataract care have been made to rapidly increase hospital capacity and prioritise patients with urgent, complex or sight threatening conditions.

The College of Optometrists and the Royal College of Ophthalmologists said large numbers of patients were at real risk of avoidable sight loss.

A pressing need to create additional capacity within existing resources was required as soon as possible, the Colleges said, with primary care providing a solution to managing low-risk patients.

It added that where post-cataract pathways were already in place or about to be commissioned, services did not need to change but in places where they weren’t approximately 80% of post-operative surgery patients could be safely managed using the recommendations.