Impact of covid-19 on eye care in spain during the first phase of the pandemic

Abstract

Background: The declaration of the first state of alarm for COVID-19 in March 2020 pro-voked changes in ophthalmological care. The objective of this study was to assess its impact on reorganising care activities, the mental health of ophthalmologists and the training of residents. Methods: We sent an anonymous online questionnaire between August and October 2020 to con-sultant ophthalmologists and residents who were active during the state of alarm in Spain. We used Google Forms® software for data collection. We analysed responses according to the degree of regional impact. Results: We received a total of 328 responses from the 17 Autonomous Communities. We saw that 99.4% of respondents changed their work activities with 50% reductions in surgery (94.5%) and consultations (93.0%). Furthermore, 58.8% of respondents reported increased anxiety, and 29.9% transferred to support other services, with this number reaching 49.6% in the hardest-hit regions. Training programs were greatly reduced in external consultations (90.7%), and surgical training was completely cancelled (100%). Additionally, 56.5% of trainees wanted to prolong their residence periods. Conclusions: The first wave of the pandemic produced significant changes in ophthalmology services, and these changes were more pronounced in the most affected regions. It caused a negative psychological impact on a high rate of respondents and an interruption of the training of ophthalmology residents. Predictably, the negative consequences of this delay in ophthalmological care on patients will be uneven between regions.