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[Treatment delay in patients with first episode of retinal detachment in the studied eye in Midi-Pyrénées]
C Tolou1, L Mahieu-Durringer1, M Cassagne1
1Unité rétine, CHU Toulouse-Purpan, pavillon Pierre-Paul-Riquet, place du Docteur-Baylac, TSA 40031, 31059 Toulouse, France.
Introduction:
Retinal detachment (RD) is a potentially blinding condition. Delay in management is a major prognostic factor. In our study, we analyzed the treatment delay for retinal detachments in the Midi-Pyrenees area, and factors which may influence it.
Material And Methods:
Observational, cross-sectional, multicentric study, carried out over a 6-month period.
Primary Outcome:
time between diagnosis and surgery. Secondary outcome: time between first symptoms and surgery. Non-parametric tests were used to analyze the influence of sociodemographic features, clinical features, distance between home and surgical center, and occurrence over a weekend.
Results:
One hundred and fiftty-nine patients were included. The mean time between diagnosis and surgery was 4.4 ± 12.3 days (2.7 ± 4.3 for recent RD, less than 1 month), and was increased by the presence of a weekend (P<0.001), or of a weekend with public holiday (P=0.023), and by macular detachment (P=0.008). The mean time between first symptoms and surgery was 12.0 days and was increased by the absence of RD history (P=0.023), and by macular detachment (P=0.046). No association was observed between these times to surgery and the distance between the patient's home address and the place of surgery.
Conclusion:
The time between diagnosis and surgery was relatively short in the Midi-Pyrénées area, but we often noted a delayed diagnosis, which may be due to the patient's lack of awareness of the symptoms and difficult access to specialty consultations. However, no relationship was found between this time-to-surgery and the distance between the patient's home and the surgical center.