AN AUDIT OF THE 1995 ROYAL-COLLEGE OF OPHTHALMOLOGISTS GUIDELINES FORSCREENING FOR RETINOPATHY OF PREMATURITY APPLIED RETROSPECTIVELY IN ONE REGIONAL NEONATAL INTENSIVE-CARE UNIT

To test the effectiveness of the 1995 Royal College of Ophthalmologist s (RCO) guidelines for screening for retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) in one regional neonatal intensive care unit, an analysis was carried out of screening examination results over a 4 year period, retrospecti vely applying the rules of the 1995 RCO guidelines, Four hundred and f orty-eight examinations would have been performed in 258 infants, sign ificantly fewer than the 764 examinations which had been performed usi ng our existing screening protocol, Threshold ROP developed in 36 infa nts, and would have been detected promptly in every case, No case of t hreshold ROP developed in infants of birth weight greater than 1250 g. The 1995 RCO guidelines for ROP screening provide an effective and ef ficient means of detecting treatable ROP, The need to include infants of birth weight >1250 g should be reviewed at a future date, following a period of further national data collection.