Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on cataract surgical volume: A North Indian experience.

PURPOSE

To analyze the impact of the pandemic on trends in cataract surgical volume in 2020 in a high-volume tertiary care academic center in North India.

METHODS

The monthly cataract surgical volume for a large, high-volume, tertiary care academic center in North India was obtained from January 2018 through December 2020. Based on historical trends, we used time-series forecasting, probability sensitivity analysis, and linear regression models to estimate what the expected monthly cataract volume should have been from March 2020 onward.

RESULTS

In 2020, we expected to perform 7500 cases (assuming historical trends) but performed only 2500 cases (33% of the expected volume). The remaining 5000 cases (67% cases) constituted the "fixed" backlog. Assuming the ramp-up in cataract surgical volume starts in January 2021, results of the Monte Carlo simulation revealed that for our system, it would take on average 5 months (May 2021) under the optimistic scenario and 10 months (October 2021) under the ambivalent scenario to reach pre-pandemic expected surgical volume. There would be a collective backlog of 5500 cases under the optimistic scenario (8.8 months' worth of cases) and a collective backlog of 6900 cases under the ambivalent scenario (11 months' worth of cases).

CONCLUSION

An intuitive approach and out-of-the-box solutions are required by the government and private institutes' collaborative efforts to help mitigate the disruptions caused by the pandemic and lessen the backlog without causing provider burnout.