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  • Acute Endophthalmitis After Intraocular Procedures

    By Jean Shaw
    Selected by Andrew P. Schachat, MD
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    Journal Highlights

    Ophthalmology Retina, June 2022

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    Baudin et al. set out to describe the causes of postoperative acute endophthalmitis in France from 2009 to 2018. They found that the raw number of endophthalmitis cases dropped follow­ing cataract surgery during this time frame—but increased among patients who received intravitreal injections.

    For this cohort study, the researchers used the French national medical-ad­ministrative database. Procedures and cases of endophthalmitis were identified based on billing codes in French hospi­tals and private practices. From Jan. 1, 2009, to Oct. 31, 2018, 14,438,854 in­traocular procedures were performed, and 7,522 cases of endophthalmitis occurred. The mean age of affected pa­tients was 71.7 years, and slightly over half (51.12%) were women.

    Overall, the incidence of endoph­thalmitis was low, at .0521 per 100 cases—that is, one case per every 2,000 procedures.

    However, this varied by type of procedure:

    • Cataract surgery. A total of 4,808 cases of endophthalmitis occurred, for an incidence of one case per 1,522 pro­cedures. The case count dropped from 719 in 2009 to 469 in 2017, despite an increase in the number of cataract surgeries (from 584,188 to 847,320) during this same time period. (Of note, 2018 was a truncated year with regard to data collection.)
    • Intravitreal injections. The number of endophthalmitis cases following intravitreal injections rose from 61 in 2009 to 184 in 2017, for a total of 1,296 during the study period and one case per 4,210 procedures. During the same time frame, the number of intravitreal injections rose from 188,330 in 2009 to 869,575 in 2017.
    • Vitreoretinal surgery. A total of 698 cases of endophthalmitis occurred fol­lowing 442,263 vitreoretinal surgeries, for one case per 634 procedures.
    • Other procedures. These include corneal, filtering, and anterior segment surgeries. Overall, the greatest number of postprocedural endophthalmitis cases occurred following anterior segment surgeries—after 274,995 anterior seg­ment surgeries, 245 cases of endoph­thalmitis occurred, for one case per 1,122 procedures.

    The original article can be found here.