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Published on: September 11, 2013
Impact of local COVID-19 alert levels on rhegmatogenous retinal detachment
Yoshiaki Chiku1, Takao Hirano2, Ken Hoshiyama1
1Department of Ophthalmology, Shinshu University School of Medicine, 3-1-1 Asahi, Matsumoto, 390-8621, Nagano, Japan.
Purpose:
To investigate the impact of the local alert levels regarding coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on the clinical patterns of rhegmatogenous retinal detachment (RRD) in Japan.
Study Design:
Retrospective, single-center, consecutive case series.
Methods:
We compared two groups of RRD patients, a COVID-19 pandemic group and a control group. Based on the local alert levels in Nagano, five periods during the COVID-19 pandemic were further analyzed: epidemic 1 (state of emergency), inter-epidemic 1, epidemic 2 (second epidemic duration), inter-epidemic 2, and epidemic 3 (third epidemic duration). Patients' characteristics, including symptoms' duration before visiting our hospital, macula status, and retinal detachment (RD) recurrence rate in each period, were compared with those in a control group.
Results:
There were 78 patients in the pandemic group and 208 in the control group. The pandemic group had a longer duration of symptoms than the control group (12.0 ± 13.5 days vs. 8.9 ± 14.7 days, P = 0.0045). During the epidemic 1 period, patients had a higher rate of macula-off RRD (71.4% vs. 48.6%) and RD recurrence (28.6% vs. 4.8%) than the control group. This period also demonstrated the highest rates compared to all other periods in the pandemic group.
Conclusion:
During the COVID-19 pandemic, RRD patients significantly delayed visiting a surgical facility. They showed a higher rate of macula-off and recurrence compared to the control group during the state of emergency than during other periods of the COVID-19 pandemic, although the difference was not statistically significant due to the small sample size.
