Patients who undergo cataract surgery simultanous with a second procedure may be more prone to developing acute postoperative endophthalmitis (POE), according to research published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology.¹

In this cohort study, French researchers assessed the incidence of POE after cataract surgery combined with corneal, glaucoma or vitreoretinal surgical procedures from 2005 to 2014. The investigators examined billing codes of patients diagnosed with acute POE six weeks after cataract surgery with phacoemulsification, or after corneal, glaucoma or vitreoretinal surgical procedures, either combined or stand-alone.

Over the 10-year study period, roughly 6,260,477 eyes underwent phacoemulsification cataract surgery as a single procedure, and 115,468 eyes underwent a combined procedure. The incidence of acute POE after stand-alone surgery was 0.102% compared with a rate of 0.149% for combined surgery—an adjusted incidence rate ratio (IRR) of 1.38. The study found glaucoma surgeries were associated with a lower acute POE incidence compared with phacoemulsification IRR of 0.63. Conversely, the incidence of POE from vitreoretinal surgical procedures was 1.78.

“A higher incidence of acute POE after combined cataract surgery than after cataract surgery done as a stand-alone procedure was observed based on the French nationwide medical-administrative database,” investigators reported. “The incidence of acute POE after combined surgery was related to the type of surgery performed simultaneously with cataract extraction.”