Prevalence of second-eye cataract surgery and time interval after first-eye surgery in Iran: a clinic-based study

To determine the prevalence of second-eye senile cataract surgery [SECS] as a proportion of all senile cataract surgeries and the trend in the interval between first and second cataract operations in a main referral and academic eye hospital. In this cross-sectional study, a list of patients who underwent senile cataract surgery over four consecutive years [2006-2009] was retrieved from hospital computer-based records as the sampling frame. With a systematic random method, 15% of records were selected [1, 585 out of 10, 517 records]. First- and second-eye operations were performed in 1, 139 [71.9%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 69.5-74.1] and 446 eyes [28.1%; 95% CI, 25.9-30.35], respectively. The proportion of SECS procedures increased from 24.3% in 2006 to 33.4% in 2009 [P- 0.017]. The median [interquartile range] interval between the two operations was 9 [4-24] months, which remained stable during the study period. The SECS rate was 10.4% higher [P - 0.0l] and the time interval was 13 months shorter [P- 0.007] in patients who underwent phacoemulsification than extracapsular cataract extraction. The number of cataract operations in this tertiary eye care setting increased 1.5 fold over the study period. The proportion of second-eye operations also rose from 1/4 to 1/3 during the same time