Preoperative Visual Acuity of Cataract Patients in a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital in Eastern India

Abstract

Cataract has been identified as the leading cause of blindness globally. Humans are blessed with the sense of sight by means of a pair of eyes which captures the image in the retina, which is carried to the brain by means of axons and neurons where it is processed. A retrospective study of patients with age-related cataracts who had cataract surgery performed between July 2015 to June 2017 at Department of ophthalmology , IMS and SUM hospital . Systematic random sampling and probability proportionate to size were used to recruit a representative sample. Information on sociodemographic characteristics, preoperative visual acuity, ocular and systemic comorbidities were retrieved and analysed.  The axial length of the 100 patients , mean axial length is 22.71 0.83 mm. The percentage of visual acuity obtained post operatively along with PCVA. The mean preoperative visual acuity of patients in this facility did not change over the 10-year study period. Mean value of preoperative visual acuity remained within the range of blindness and did not improve over the decade. This could either be a reflection of visual impairment at which our patients seek care or an indication of the range of visual acuities at which surgeons are willing to offer cataract surgery in our environment