UCHW Cataracts referral information

Please can you forward this to all on your database and if possible add it to your website.
Due to the COVID-19 outbreak the government have asked us to review non-essential appointments and surgeries. Following this review, cataract surgeries and routine cataract assessments/follow-ups have been stepped down for the interim period at both UHCW NHS Trust and Rugby St Cross Hospital.
All patients who already have a cataract assessment appointment booked will be contacted by phone, and those that can manage in the medium term without intervention will be discharged with advice to get referred back for possible cataract surgery when hospital services resume normally.
Those who still wish to go ahead with cataract surgery will have their assessment appointment cancelled. They will be contacted with a new cataract assessment appointment when the service is up and running again. This may be in 12 weeks but is dependent on government advice.
In the short term, for those patient that have recently undergone cataract surgery and are waiting for a post-op follow-up, we will be implementing a telephone review
We wish to engage the local community optometrists for help with this group.
The outcome of the telephone reviews will be one of the following for each patient:
1) Those that are asymptomatic and not needing 2nd eye surgery or other follow up will be discharged to the community optometrist for a routine eye test.
2) Those that are asymptomatic but need 2nd eye surgery will be asked to go to community optometrist as above, but we will record those that need 2nd eye surgery and offer a fresh assessment appointment in hospital, when the service resumes. This is likely to be at least 12 weeks and then the
person would need to go on a waiting list for surgery. They may need glasses in this interim period with advice that the glasses may need changing after 2nd eye surgery. Many can be advised to use ready-made readers as a stop gap.
3) Those that are asymptomatic regarding the cataract but are under our care for other co pathology we will advise to go to the community optometrist for an eye exam but also their details will be forwarded onto their consultant for review so that they are not lost to follow up. However (just for information) many routine eye disease patients are having their routine hospital clinic appointment delayed by many months.
4) Those that are symptomatic will be brought into hospital for review
I realise that this is very short notice to ask the community optometrists to help out but it will only be for a few weeks.
Please be aware that these patients often have a drier eye than usual post op.
1) If after the eye examination the optometrist considers that the patient needs a hospital post op appointment please could they inform us via the cataract email in box as below? This will be monitored daily Monday-Friday.
2) Each patient will know from our contact whether we plan to list the 2nd eye or not. So if a patient has been advised that we are not planning to list 2nd eye when the service resumes but does required the 2nd eye surgery, please use the cataract inbox to refer the patient back rather than start the whole process again; Please limit this to only those where the 2nd eye is symptomatic and the patient is keen for surgery.
We highly value feedback on the patient’s VA and post op refraction. Please could this information be sent to the following email address:
uhcw.stcrosscataract@nhs.net
This cataract inbox is NOT available for other cataract referrals
Thanks in advance for your help in these difficult times.
Please circulate this information amongst your optometrist colleagues.