3 MONTHS FOLLOW-UP OF IOL IMPLANTATION IN REMOTE EYE CAMPS IN NEPAL

In early 1996 Posterior Chamber IOL Implantation was used routinely fo r the first time in surgical eye camps in the Dhaulagiri and Gandaki r egions of Nepal. A series of follow-up camps was organised at the orig inal locations three months following surgery to evaluate the visual o utcome. A team of paramedics and doctor of the Himalaya Eye Hospital i n Pokhara carried out vision, refraction, slitlamp examination and fun doscopy on 40% of the 424 patients who received a standard power IOL. Improved vision following surgery was seen in 95% of the cases with 93 % better than 6/60 uncorrected. A post-op vision of better than 6/18 u ncorrected was seen in 62%. Poor outcome was found in 5% (vision equal or worse than pre-op) with only 2 out of 9 cases directly related to the surgery. Only one case with PCO and poor outcome was seen in this study. A spherical equivalent outside the range of +1.00 to -2.50 was seen in 7%. This study indicates that good results can be achieved in eye camps at remote locations with the use of a standard power IOL.