A COMPARISON OF THE SUCCESS RATES OF RESIDENT AND ATTENDING STRABISMUS SURGERY

Residency training involves surgery by resident surgeons at various le vels of experience and proficiency, supervised by an experienced atten ding physician. We reviewed the results of strabismus surgery performe d at four institutions with two residency training programs. Five hund red twenty-two cases with follow up greater than 6 weeks were evaluate d. These cases included 315 attending procedures and 207 resident proc edures under direct attending supervision. Success was defined as a st rabismic deviation of 8 prism diopters or less. Average postoperative follow-up was 57 weeks and did not differ between groups. There was no statistical difference between the resident success rate of 58% (121/ 207) and the attending success rate of 69% (217/315) after adjusting f or population differences. The average final deviation of the patients postoperatively was 7 DELTA for the attending group and 10 DELTA for the resident group. Amblyopia was significantly more frequent in the r esident cases (P < .001). Adjustable sutures were used significantly m ore often in attending cases (P < .0001). This study supports the prem ise that resident strabismus surgery is as successful as attending sur gery.