Purpose:
To determine the trend of the cataract surgical rate in Khorasan Razavi Province between 2006 and 2010.
Methods:
Five centers were randomly selected from the cataract surgery centers of Khorasan Razavi Province. Using the definition of more than 3000 cataract surgeries per year for a major center, 3 centers were major and 2 were minor. One week of each season was randomly selected for each center and the number of cataract surgeries in that particular week was calculated. A total of 20 weeks for each center were selected. Finally, a percentage of the records, proportionate to the number of surgeries per week, were thoroughly analyzed.
Results:
The total number of cataract surgeries was estimated 21388, 22750, 23888, 28063, and 30100 from 2007 to 2011, respectively. The cataract surgical rate, considering the population of Khorasan Razavi province, increased linearly from 3782 (95% CI 3732-3833) in 2007 to 5021 (95% CI 4965-5078) in 2011 per 1,000,000 people. In addition, the types of surgeries were intracapsular, extracapsular, phacoemulsification, lensectomy in which were recorded as 0.3%, 15.1%, 84.56%, and 0.1% of the cases, respectively. During the five years of the study, phacoemulsification increased significantly from 74.7% in 2007 to 90.4% in 2011 while the extracapsular method decreased from 14.7% to 9.2% in the same period of time. About 0.87% of the surgeries developed intraoperative complications.
Conclusion:
This study reported the cataract surgical rate in Khorasan Razavi province exclusively for the first time. The calculated rate was noticeably better than previous reports and was desirable and acceptable according to the WHO standards. However, with regard to the increase in the elderly population of the province, the rate should be even higher to cover all individuals requiring cataract surgery. Therefore, provision of the cataract surgery facilities, especially for the phacoemulsification, and education of this method should receive priority in the health system of this province.