An audit of minor ophthalmic surgical interventions in a tertiary eye care facility in northern Nigeria

Summary

An estimated 285 million people are visually impaired globally, and 39 million of them are blind. Over 60% of blindness is attributable to surgical causes of blindness. A surgical audit reveals areas of performance that require improvement, to assess the output and pattern of minor ophthalmic surgeries over a seven-year period. The minor ophthalmic surgical records of Jos University Teaching Hospital, Jos, Nigeria were retrospectively reviewed to obtain information on the patients’ demographics, diagnosis, indication, type of surgery, type of anaesthesia administered, outcome of management, histology report and the rank of surgeon.

A total of 536 patients had minor ophthalmic operations at the Jos University Teaching Hospital between January 2008 and December 2014. There were 281 (52.4%) males and 255 (47.6%) females (÷ =9.4, p>0.1) with a mean age of 37.2 years (SD:24). Furthermore, 41 (7.6%) patients had surgery in both eyes. The main anatomical sites of ocular morbidity were eyelid/lashes, conjunctiva and anterior segment observed in 237 (41.1%), 166 (28.8%) and 94 (16.3%) eyes respectively. The main surgical procedures included pterygium excision in 104 (17.8%) cases, eyelid repair in 74 (12.7%) cases and incision and curettage for chalazion in 65 (11.1%) cases (÷2=23.9, p<0.001). A recurrence rate of 31.6% and 6.1% was observed in eyes that had pterygium excision and incision and curettage for chalazion respectively; 83.8% of eyelids repaired had no postoperative sequelae while notching of the eyelid margin was observed in 9.4% of eyelids repaired.