Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on ophthalmic presentations to an Australian outer metropolitan and rural emergency department: a retrospective comparative study.

Background: To analyse ophthalmic presentations to an outer metropolitan and a rural emergency department (ED) during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in New South Wales (NSW), Australia.

Methods: A retrospective comparative study of ophthalmic emergency presentations to Campbelltown Hospital (fifth busiest NSW metropolitan ED; population 310,000) and Bowral and District Hospital (rural ED; population 48,000) before and during COVID-19 was conducted. Patient demographics, triage category, referral source, diagnosis, length of stay, departure status, and follow-up location were assessed from coding data between March 1st to May 31st in 2019 and 2020, corresponding to the peak case numbers and restrictions during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in NSW.

ASSESSING THE ACCURACY OF A LARGE OBSERVATIONAL REGISTRY OF NEOVASCULAR AGE-RELATED MACULAR DEGENERATION.

Purpose: To evaluate the accuracy of an observational database that tracks real-world treatment outcomes for neovascular age-related macular degeneration.

Methods: We audited 245 randomly sampled eyes from 189 patients with 3,356 visits from 11 doctors in the Fight Retinal Blindness!

Database: Sex, birth year, previous treatments received, treatment, and visual acuity were validated against the clinical notes. Error rates, the proportion of missed visits (the number of visits present in the patient record but not entered into Fight Retinal Blindness!), the level of agreement using Cohen's kappa (κ) and intraclass correlation coefficients, and positive and negative predictive values were calculated.

A Retrospective Analysis of the Effect of Subretinal Hyper-Reflective Material and Other Morphological Features of Neovascular Age-Related Macular Degeneration on Visual Acuity Outcomes in Eyes Treated with Intravitreal Aflibercept over One Year.

A retrospective study of 176 treatment-naïve eyes with neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD) that had undergone intravitreal aflibercept treatment (2.0 mg, 7-8 times over one year) was performed to correlate the effect of aflibercept on the morphological features of nAMD-subretinal hyper-reflective material (SHRM), pigment epithelial detachment (PED), subretinal fluid (SRF), and intraretinal fluid (IRF)-with visual acuity at baseline and at one year. Spectral-Domain Optical Coherence Tomography (SD-OCT) images and best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) at baseline and at one year were obtained.