Sustained impact of COVID-19 on primary retinal detachment repair in a tertiary eye hospital from March to December 2020.

Abstract

In total we reviewed 1310 patients, 1003 in Group 1 and 307 in Group 2. Relative to 2017-2019, during the first lockdown, we observed (a) a reduction in the number of patients with RRD, (b) an increase in macula-off detachments, (c) an increase in RRD primary failure, and (d) that the least deprived had proportionately higher primary failure than the most deprived (p = 0.049) with a higher detachment rate than the pre-COVID-19 period (p = 0.010) and increased presentations of macula-off detachment. During the second lockdown, these differences were not observed.