BMJ 2001;323:455 ( 25 August )

Letters

Cataract surgery in very elderly patients

    Biological age is more important than chronological age
    Outcome of cataract surgery is poor in developing countries

Biological age is more important than chronological age

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR---Wong's article on the effectiveness of cataract surgery in elderly people contains an emphasis on chronological age and final visual acuity as a measure of success.1 Wong does not mention the importance of biological age of individual patients and pays little attention to the potential improvement in daily functioning associated with cataract surgery. These are important factors when considering patients of any age for cataract surgery. But they are difficult to measure quantitatively and difficult to investigate; consequently they are not easily shoehorned into guidelines or health policy. A visual acuity of 6/12 or better is generally taken as a successful outcome in most studies in this area, and Wong applies this assumption to very elderly people. Very elderly people are, however, two to three times more likely to start with severely impaired vision (acuity of 6/60 or worse).2 Depending on an individual patient's circumstances, a final postoperative . . . [Full text of this article]
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Relevant Article

Regular review: Effect of increasing age on cataract surgery outcomes in very elderly patients
Tien Yin Wong
BMJ 2001 322: 1104-1106. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

This article has been cited by other articles:

  • Lam, D. S. C., Rao, S. K., Fan, A. H., Congdon, N. G., Wong, V., Liu, Y., Lam, P. T. H. (2009). Endothelial Cell Loss and Surgically Induced Astigmatism After Sutureless Large-Incision Manual Cataract Extraction (SLIMCE). Arch Ophthalmol 127: 1284-1289 [Abstract] [Full text]  
  • Kelly, S P, Billington, B (2008). Cataract surgery in England. Br J Ophthalmol 92: 722-723 [Full text]  
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