Project 461048

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness and vision loss, and can impact peoples' ability to perform daily activities, leading to decreased quality of life, higher rates of falls, hip fractures, and motor vehicle accidents. Surgical treatment for cataracts is effective and commonly performed in Canada, yet wait times for surgeries are significantly prolonged. Patients with visually significant cataracts are sometimes not referred for surgery while less urgent patients are booked for surgery on a first-come first-served basis. This means there are patients with visual disability not receiving cataract surgery, and others waiting just as long if not longer than a patient whose cataract has minimal impact on their daily life. In order to ensure that the right cataract patients are receiving the right care at the right time, there is a need to be able to assess the appropriateness of patients who are being referred for surgery, as well as a method to prioritize patients based on how their visual impairments impacts their daily lives. While there are cataract surgery appropriateness and prioritization tools, they have either not been validated or have been used widely in practice. As such, we plan to host a virtual symposium to: 1) bring together an international group of research and clinical leaders, patient collaborators and knowledge users who have expertise and/or experience in cataract surgery prioritization tools to share and discuss their research on cataract surgery appropriateness and prioritization, experience on large scale implementation of cataract care, and new emerging strategies and considerations, and 2) to generate a multi-perspective research agenda of internationally connected cohort of scholars and clinicians that aim to explore of a new model of care for cataract surgery that ensures appropriate, efficient and equitable access.