Paediatric Eye Services: How Much of the Workload Is Amblyopia-Related?

ABSTRACT

Aims: The proportion of patients seen by the paediatric eye service that attend for reasons related to amblyopia has not been quantified. The purpose of this study was to quantify the proportion of patients seen in the paediatric eye service attending for reasons related to amblyopia.

Methods: Records of all eye appointments of children attending the Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and St Mary’s Hospital Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust over one month in 2009 were examined to determine the diagnosis and reason for attendance.

Results: Seven hundred and four patients had appointments booked at St Mary’s and Hillingdon in March 2009. The fail-to-attend rates were not significantly different at the 2 sites (19% at St Mary’s and 9% at Hillingdon; P=0.75). Of the 704 patients, 533 (St Mary’s, 252 [75%]; Hillingdon, 281 [76%]) were attending for amblyopia-related reasons. Of the overall 982 booked appointments, 770 (79%) were amblyopia-related.

Conclusions: Amblyopia diagnosis and management is clearly the most common cause of attendance to the paediatric eye service, accounting for over three-quarters of outpatient visits.

KEYWORDS:

• Amblyopia
• paediatric eye service
• work load

Acknowledgments

We thank all the members of staff at the 2 centers (Tricia Rice, Rowena McNamara, Lena Patel, Chris Bentley, Keighley-Anne Moynagh, and Avril Charnock) who documented attendance, and to Tasanee Braithwaite, who collected and collated the data. CES is funded by a Clinical Lectureship from NIHR.

Funding statement

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. CES is supported by a Clinical Lectureship sponsored by NIHR.

Declaration of interest

None of the authors have any competing interests.

Contributorship statement

All authors contributed to the design of this study, collecting data, analyzing data, and editing the manuscript. Dr Catherine Stewart designed the study, collected the data, analyzed the data, and wrote the main body of the manuscript.