A large UK study of cataract surgeries has shown patient comorbidities and gender account for more statistically significant differences in refractive outcome errors than surgeons.
Researchers at the universities of Liverpool and Bristol investigated 490,987 cataract operations performed on 351,864 patients by 2,567 surgeons between 2010 and 2018. Myopic and astigmatic errors were associated with posterior capsule rupture (−0.38/+0.04×72), glaucoma (−0.10/+0.05×95), previous vitrectomy (−0.049/+0.03×66) and high myopia (−0.07/+0.03×57); while hyperopic and astigmatic errors were associated with diabetic retinopathy (+0.08/+0.03×104), pseudoexfoliation (+0.07/+0.01×158), male gender (+0.12/+0.05×91) and age (−0.01/+0.06×97 per increasing decade). Surgeons accounted for 4% of the unexplained variance in refractive outcome.
Writing in the British Journal of Ophthalmology, researchers noted inherited retinal disease, optic nerve disease, previous trabeculectomy, uveitis and brunescent/white cataract had no significant impact on refractive outcome error.
