Risk adjusted Posterior Capsular Rupture rate (%)

What this data shows:

Posterior Capsular Rupture (PCR) or Vitreous Loss or Both refers to a breach of the normal barrier between the front and back parts of the eye. PCR can arise as a complication of cataract surgery and may allow vitreous (a transparent substance with the consistency of egg-white which occupies the space inside the eye behind the lens) to move forward into the front part of the eye. When PCR occurs, it increases the risk of loss of vision after surgery.

How the data is gathered:

PCR is a situation that can occur during surgery and be corrected during the same surgery. Patients can have good surgical outcomes if the complication is corrected. Patient characteristics and surgeon experience can influence the likelihood of PCR occurring and information collected pre-operatively can help to mitigate against these characteristics along with suitable surgeon allocation for each patient.

When the data is shown:

Please note that some surgeons’ result will be above the overall consultant rate. The expected limits consider the number of operations undertaken by a surgeon (i.e. the sample size) and whether the rate is statistically higher or lower than might be expected for that number of operations. Small samples are associated with greater uncertainty and therefore wider limits, bigger samples have greater precision and narrower limits. It is normal for different clinicians and units to have different results and there is an expected range results can fall in. Sometimes results may fall outside the expected range, which could be an indication that the care provided is either significantly poorer or significantly better than expected. But sometimes these results just happen by chance. Detecting whether a result falls outside the expected range by change or because of a significant reason can be challenging. We want to reduce the times when we identify a unit or individuals results as being outside of the expected range just because of chance. We can do this by using a wide definition of the expected range. The narrower the definition of the expected range the greater the chance of a result being labelled as outside of it just because of chance. Audits participating in publication on NHS Choices and My NHS are asked to use statistical analysis to do this. Where we are able to identify a unit or individuals results as being significantly outside of the expected range using a wide definition, we will show this on the site. We don’t show units or individuals as being outside of the expect range using a narrower definition.

More information about the data source:

The data presented have been collected by NHS trusts and Independent Sector Treatment Centres (ISTC) providing NHS funded cataract surgery in England and submitted to the National Ophthalmology Database (NOD) Audit for analysis.

Data Source:

Trust electronic medical record (EMR) systems: e.g. Medisoft, OpenEyes, EPIC and in-house databases compliant with RCOphth national cataract dataset. For all sources, data used for the audit comprise actual (anonymised) hospital record for each patient.

Data Period:

01 September 2016 to 31 August 2017

Data Supplier:

The Royal College of Ophthalmologists’ National Ophthalmology Database (NOD) Audit

Further Information:

noa.project@rcophth.ac.uk www.nodaudit.org.uk