Characterization of COVID-19 Pre-Surgical Screening Amongst Ophthalmic Patients

ABSTRACT

Purpose: During the COVID-19 pandemic, ophthalmologists were presented with the challenge of providing safe care to patients while limiting the spread of COVID-19. As a result, many institutions implemented universal pre-surgical COVID-19 screening prior to surgery for all patients. The goals of this study are to characterize the rate of COVID-19 positivity during pre-surgical screening at our institution, the surgical outcomes experienced in COVID-19 positive ophthalmic patients, and to report overall cost of universal pre-surgical screening. Methods: This retrospective study included patients ≥ 18 years who underwent ophthalmic surgical procedures at a tertiary institution between May 11, 2020 and December 31, 2020. Patients without a valid pre-surgical COVID-19 test within the three days prior to their scheduled procedure, incomplete or mislabeled visits, and incomplete or missing data in their file were excluded. COVID-19 screening was completed by the Thermo Fisher TaqPath Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) kit. Results: Of the 3,585 patients who met inclusion criteria, 2,044 patients (57.02%) were female, and the average age was 68.2 ± 12.8 years (mean ± standard deviation). 13 asymptomatic patients (0.36%) tested positive for COVID-19 via PCR screening. Three patients had known positive COVID-19 infection within the 90 days prior to surgery, thus 10 patients (0.28%) were found to have asymptomatic naïve COVID-19 infection via PCR. Testing was associated with a total charge of $788,700. Five of the 13 COVID-19 positive patients (38.46%) experienced a delay in their surgery. The average surgical delay was 17.23 ± 22.97 days (mean ± standard deviation). Conclusions: Asymptomatic ophthalmic surgical patients experienced a low positivity rate with a limited impact on surgery scheduling at a significant cost. Further studies would be valuable in evaluating a targeted pre-surgical screening population as opposed to universal testing.