Post operative visual outcomes and complications of cataract surgery at borumeda hospital, northeast ethiopia: retrospective cross-sectional study

Introduction: Cataract is the leading cause of blindness globally, particularly in developing countries. Cataract surgery with implantation of an intraocular lens is a sophisticated technological procedure. Despite improvements in cataract surgical services in many parts of the world, cataract remains responsible for half of the global blindness burden. Objective: The aim of this study was to determine the visual outcomes and complications of patients who had cataract surgery at Borumeda hospital, Northeast Ethiopia. Method: A facility-based retrospective cross-sectional study was employed. The data was collected from 306 cataract operated patient cards and systematic random sampling technique was used to select the patient cards. The data collection tool was adopted from WHO guidelines for monitoring the outcome of cataract surgery. The data was entered and analyzed by using SPSS version 20. Descriptive statistics were used to describe socio-demographic characteristics, postoperative cataract surgery visual outcomes, intra and postoperative complications. The result was displayed in text, table and different form of graphs. Result: The findings of this study had shown that out of the study participants examined after one day, five weeks and six weeks of surgery 19.3%, 43.6% and 49.3% of patients had good visual acuity and had successful surgical outcome respectively. From all study participants undergoing cataract surgery 2.9% had developed complications. Conclusion: The result of this study had shown that from all study participants after 6 weeks of cataract surgery, half of them had no good visual acuity. Out of all 306 study participants 2.9% of them had complication of cataract surgery. Therefore recommendations forwarded for health care personnel’s, academic higher education s’, researchers, family members and friends to improve outcome of cataract surgery and to prevent post operative complications.