Nadeem Hafeez Butt, M Akram Riaz.
Medical Preassessment Clinic for Cataract Patients.
Pak J Ophthalmol Jan ;15(3):105-7.

1154 patients who underwent cataract extraction from September 1997 to August 1998 at the Department of Ophthalmology, Fatima Jinnah Medical College and Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Lahore, were retrospectively reviewed: 484 patients (41.9%) were found to have associated systemic disorders like hypertension (44.4%), diabetes mellitus (18.6%), hypertension and diabetes (29.6%), cardiac disorders (3.7%) and pulmonary disorders (3.7%). In this study female patients had preponderance of systemic disorders (66.7%). These patients had a longer hospital stay (3-14 days) as compared to the patients who were not suffering from systemic disorders. The maximum hospital stay was observed in patients who had hypertension and diabetes both and they only knew about one of their disorders at the time of admission and the other was diagnosed on investigations. This highlights the Importance of preassessment clinics in the Eye outpatient department for medical evaluation and fitness for surgery as Is the routine practice In other developing and developed countries of the world. This would be a step towards developing day-care surgery routine in tertiary care hospitals and would help in reducing the enormous cataract backlog in this country.

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