ASCRS 2023: The safety of office space cataract surgeries

Lance Kugler, MD, recapped his presentation and findings on the safety of office space cataract surgery with the Ophthalmology Times© team at the ASCRS annual meeting in San Diego.

Video transcript

Editor’s note: Transcript lightly edited for clarity.

Lance Kugler, MD:

I'm Lance Kugler. I'm here at ASCRS 2023 presenting a deeper look at complication rates in office space surgery centers. This has been a really hot topic for the past couple of years because of the rapid expansion of office space cataract surgery in the United States. and one of the top questions that patients ask is, is it safe? And so we looked that. In this particular study is 18,000 eyes in the study, looking at complication rates at centers across the United States. And, what we found was the complication rates were the same better than published, accepted complication rates, cataract surgery in seasoned hospitals.

The other thing that comes up a lot about office space surgeries centers is the concept that, a lot of people think that we're making the, that the sicker patients aren't being done there. And so, we looked at, in this paper, we looked at how many of these patients have comordidity, and we actually found that 62% of patients that we looked at had comorbidity, yet they were included in that same safety view. So, the conclusions of the study were that cataract surgery in office space setting is as safe or safer at your hospital.