The Consulting Room: Betting on ophthalmology?

I hope by the time you read this the general election will be a distant memory and we will be assessing the likely effects of a new administration on our health. I will not indulge in any predictions and, luckily, I had not even considered betting on any aspect of the political machinations.

Rather than predicting the future we can instead look at some hard data that has recently been published and is relevant to our work for patients. The latest National Ophthalmology Database (NOD) report has been published and it shows that our cataract surgery services are steadily improving. 

The headline figures are notable. The risk of serious complication, posterior capsule rupture (PCR), has fallen by 58% since first reported in 2010. It stands at 0.8%, which equates to one in 125 patients experiencing this problem. This is closely linked to the second headline figure from NOD - the rate of significant visual loss, which has also fallen too, to around 0.5% or one in 200 patients.