ABSTRACT
Purpose: The study was aimed at finding out the present pattern of referrals to the Pediatric Ophthalmology outpatient department (OPD) in a tertiary eye care hospital and thus identify the discrepancy of referral, if any, which would help to modify and enhance the practice guidelines. Methods: The study was conducted by retrospectively collecting data from all referral letters that were already uploaded in the Electronic Medical Report (EMR) against all patients from June 2019 to December 2019. All pediatric patients in the age group of 0–16 years were included in the study. The practicing field of referring clinicians was noted along with the maximum information that could be collected from the referral letter and were thus assessed for the quality, accuracy, and timely referral. Results: Out of 77 referrals received in the study period, six referral letters neither had any mention of the designation of the referring clinician nor any specific diagnosis or details. Thus, only 71 patients were included for further study. The referring clinicians were mainly ophthalmologists, pediatricians, general practitioners (GPs), and others (cardiologists, neurologists). Maximum patients were referred by ophthalmologists (76%) but visual acuity was noted only for 30% of these patients. Almost half of the referral diagnosis was accurate. Pediatrician referrals were found to be more detailed and précised. Conclusion: There is a need for a standardized hospital?specific format of referrals and basic training to primary care providers on some simple tests (Lights reflex tests) for identifying the “red flags” in pediatric eye examination and thus enhancing the quality and timely referral per se
ABSTRACT
Background: References of patients with ocular diseases are an indirect indicator that reflects integration of primary eye care into primary health care system. The study reviewed the ophthalmic references from four randomly selected primary health care centres to ophthalmic unit of secondary and tertiary hospitals in Qassim Province of Saudi Arabia.Methods: This was a retrospective health record review study was undertaken at four PHC centres in Qassim region during the year 2017. All cases referred for eye care from January 2015 until December 2016 were included. Prevalence of ophthalmic reference, profile of ophthalmic patients and ophthalmic diagnosis were analysed.Results: From primary health care centres, 423 eye cases from 1,387,996 population of catchment area were referred. The annual prevalence of eye reference was 1.5 per 10,000. Vision screening and diabetic retinopathy evaluation comprised of 55.5% of total reference.Conclusions: Poor reference pattern from primary health care centers to secondary and tertiary eye centre suggest urgent and strong need of implementing primary eye care in the primary health care centres of Saudi Arabia. Referral of simple eye cases are increasing the workload of ophthalmologists and can delay urgent referrals like cases of diabetic retinopathy screening.