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BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic had a profound impact on healthcare and ophthalmology services globally. Numerous studies amongst various medical and surgical specialties showed a reduction in patient attendance and surgical procedures performed. Prior published ophthalmic literature focused on specific types of procedures and were usually single centre. The current study attempts to quantify the impact on a larger scale, namely that of sub-Saharan Africa, and to include all ophthalmic subspecialties. METHODS: This is a retrospective analysis of the surgical records from 17 ophthalmology centres in seven countries located in East, Central, West and Southern Africa. The date of declaration of the first lockdown was used as the beginning of the pandemic and the pivot point to compare theatre records one year prior to the pandemic and the first year of the pandemic. We examined the total number of surgical procedures over the two year period and categorized them according to ophthalmic subspecialty and type of procedure performed. We then compared the pre-pandemic and pandemic surgical numbers over the two year period. RESULTS: There were 26,357 ophthalmic surgical procedures performed with a significant decrease in the first year of the pandemic (n = 8942) compared to the year prior to the pandemic (n = 17,415). The number of surgical procedures performed was lower in the first year of the pandemic compared to the year prior to the pandemic by 49% [Incidence rate ratio (IRR) 0.51, 95% CI 0.41-0.64), 27% (0.73, 0.55-0.99), 46% (0.54, 0.30-0.99), 40% (0.60, 0.39-0.92) and 59% (0.41, 0.29-0.57) in sub-Saharan Africa (4 regions combined), West, Central, East and Southern Africa, respectively]. The number of surgical procedures in the different sub-specialty categories in sub-Saharan Africa (4 regions combined) was significantly lower in the first year of the pandemic compared to the year prior to the pandemic, except for glaucoma (IRR 0.72, 95% CI 0.52-1.01), oncology (0.71, 0.48-1.05), trauma (0.90, 0.63-1.28) and vitreoretinal (0.67, 0.42-1.08) categories. CONCLUSION: This study provides insight into the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in multiple regions and countries on the African continent. The identification of which surgical subspecialty was most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in each region allows for better planning and resource allocation to address these backlogs.
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INTRODUCTION: Addition in patients of less than 40 years is not uncommon in our practice. We investigated the need for addition after objective refraction and thus determine the average age of onset of the presbyopia. METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional descriptive study of patients aged 35-45 years at the Central Hospital of Yaoundé over a period of three months. All patients underwent cycloplegic refraction. Distance visual acuity was corrected after instillation of cycloplegic eye drops while near addition was assessed two days later when the cycloplegia was no longer effective. Possible additional distance correction was done 2 days after cycloplegia. Statistical analysis was done using IBM SPSS 20.0 software. RESULTS: We examined 55 patients, 110 eyes. The average age of patients was 41.87±2.5 years, the sex-ratio was 0.28. There was a female predominance. Hypermetropic astigmatism was the most common ametropia (58.2% of cases) followed by hyperopia (24.6%).No patient was myopic. the average age of presbyopia onset in this age group was 43.2±1.7 years. After objective correction of distance visual acuity, no patient needed for addition before the age of 40. Moreover, 4 out of 10 patients with hypermetropic ametropia did not need addition before the age of 40. Addition was significantly associated with age. CONCLUSION: The average age of presbyopia onset is 43.2±1.7 years. Before the age of 45, addition must be preceded by objective refraction.
