IS THE FIRST DAY POSTOPERATIVE REVIEW NECESSARY AFTER CATARACT-EXTRACTION

Background-In current ophthalmic practice day-case surgery cataract pa tients are conventionally discharged and then reviewed the following m orning thus limiting the advantages of what 'true' day-case surgery st rives to achieve. The aim of this study was to see if there was a diff erence in outcome between 'true' day-case cataract surgery and non-day -care surgery. Methods-A total of 387 consecutive cataract operations were followed, comprising 122 local anaesthetic day-cases, 149 local a naesthetic non-day-cases, 63 general anaesthetic non-day-cases, and 53 general anaesthetic day-cases. Results-Although not randomised the gr oups were comparable with respect to age, operator grade, sex, presenc e of diabetes, anaesthetic type, pre and postoperative visual acuities , and time to first planned outpatient visit. There were 10 early post operative complications in the day-case group (5.71% of total) and 14 in the non-day-case group (6.6% of total), the commonest complications in both groups were raised intraocular pressure, corneal oedema, and wound leaks. One patient in each group had an early complication that necessitated attending the casualty department. The visual outcomes in both groups were comparable. Conclusions-These findings suggest that there were no preventable complications within the constraints of the number of operations studied and that no additional risk is attached t o 'true' day-case surgery relative to non-day-case surgery.