ABSTRACT
In 2020, routine cataract surgery was halted in most countries due to the COVID-19 pandemic in order to reduce transmission. With a consequent lack of theatre space, we developed a safe cataract pathway in outpatient department clean rooms to minimize patient exposure and time spent in hospital using a sterile laminar air flow device. We describe our initial experiences of restarting elective cataract surgery in the UK outpatient setting, outside of the operating theatre environment.
RESULTS
1269 patients were included in the study. No patients sustained post-operative infection (n = 0/1269, 0%). For the initial 100 patients, the average time spent within the department was 74.3 min (unilateral cases, range 45–115 min) and 93.1 min (bilateral, 55–135 min). Patient satisfaction was high.
CONCLUSION
Initial results demonstrate a safe, efficient and effective cataract surgery pathway with high patient satisfaction by converting outpatient clean rooms into ophthalmic operating theatres using the Toul Meditech Operio Mobile.
The device has a range of 400 cubic meters per hour. This means that for a 25 square meter clinic, all the air from the room is filtered every 10 minutes, greatly increasing the asepticity of the whole environment.
The mobile laminar flow is equipped with double traceability for defensive medicine: adhesive label and barcode on the sterile cover, which can be exported via USB pen and stored on hospital servers. It is always possible to demonstrate that an ISO class 5 device has been used to maintain asepticity from the first to the last minute of the operation.