The purpose of the study was to analyze the frequency of the spontaneous
posterior vitreous detachment (PVD) in patients admitted to an Emergency Eye
Department in Italy (EED) during the COVID-19 pandemic national lockdown in 2020
compared with the similar time period in 2019. In this retrospective
observational study, patient records for ophthalmology EED patients in the month
of April 2020 during the COVID-19 Italian national lockdown, were compared with
those for an equivalent one-month period in 2019. Diagnoses, gender, and age were
assessed. Unpaired Student t-tests were used for continuous variables.
Poisson regression was used for count analysis to compare categorical variables.
Chi-square test was applied to asses proportion differences. In comparison with
the 2019 equivalent period, there was a significant decrease in the overall
number of EED visits and in the number of patients presenting with a spontaneous
PVD during the 2020 lockdown (–41.6% and –49%, respectively). During the 2020
lockdown, all diagnostic categories showed less patient admittance, however, the
proportions remained stable when considering the entire cohort. The proportion of
urgent visits was 90% in 2020 and 86% in 2019 (p = 0.66). The
proportion of EED patients affected by spontaneous PVD was comparable between the
two study periods (8.4% in 2020 vs. 9.6% in 2019, p = 0.34). Patients
presenting with spontaneous PVD in both periods were significantly older when
compared to patients with other pathologies (mean age of 63years in 2020 and
64years in 2019, p
Cite this article
30
Downloads
1
Citations
89
Views
Announcements
Open Access
Original Research
The influence of COVID-19 lockdowns on presentation with spontaneous posterior vitreous detachment to the emergency department in Italy
Show Less
1
Department of Ophthalmology, University Hospital of Udine, 33100 Udine, Italy
2
Department of Ophthalmology, Azienda Sanitaria “Friuli Occidentale”, 33170 Pordenone, Italy
*Correspondence: mark.zeppieri@asufc.sanita.fvg.it (Marco Zeppieri)
Front. Biosci. (Elite Ed) 2021, 13(2), 259–271;
https://doi.org/10.52586/E883
Submitted: 11 May 2021 | Revised: 9 August 2021 | Accepted: 13 October 2021 | Published: 20 December 2021
Copyright: © 2021 The Author(s). Published by BRI.
This is an open access article under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Abstract
Keywords
Spontaneous posterior vitreous detachment
COVID-19
Pandemic
Photopsia
Myodesopsia
Emergency eye department
Retinal detachment
Figures
Fig. 1.