Predictors of Patient Compliance with Follow-Up Visits after Cataract Surgery.

Purpose: To identify patient characteristics associated with follow-up compliance and to draw implications for better cataract treatment services. Setting: Aravind Eye Hospital, Madurai, India. Design: Retrospective case study. Methods: The data of all cataract surgeries performed in 2015 were analyzed. After each surgery, patients were asked to return for follow-up after 1 month. The follow-up rates were compared between patients with different demographic characteristics, surgical factors, and preoperative and discharge visual acuities. The behaviors of patients who complied with the follow-up advice were analyzed, including the number of days from surgery to follow-up and number of follow-up visits. Multivariate regression models were used to identify predictors associated with these behaviors. Results: The overall follow-up rate for the 86 776 surgeries analyzed was 85.6%. Patients more likely to follow-up were women, younger than 70 years, and paying (versus subsidized or free) and had phacoemulsification rather than manual small-incision cataract surgery (all P <.001). Patients who had complications, reoperations, or poorer visual acuity at discharge were less likely to comply with the follow-up advice (P <.001). Conclusions: Targeted interventions to boost follow-up rates should be directed to patients with the characteristics found in this study. Furthermore, average measures of visual outcomes at 4 weeks are likely to be overstated relative to the truth. (C) 2019 ASCRS and ESCRS