“Every year 7 thousand Italian ophthalmologists visit 20 million patients, perform 1 million sight-saving surgeries and undertake to deliver 1 million intravitreal injections to fight maculopathy and thus prevent thousands of people from losing sight. In summary, we save the sight of 1.3 million people every year. However, due to too much bureaucracy, ophthalmology is now considered the Cinderella of the NHS. A situation that has deteriorated due to Covid-19. With the pandemic, this specialization is positioned among non-life-saving elective assistance and, consequently, not a priority. A serious mistake, the son of bureaucracy. Politics and institutions must listen to us “. The warning comes from Matteo Piovella, president of the Italian Ophthalmological Society (Soi)concerned by the impact that the health emergency has had on the ophthalmology departments.
“During the pandemic – Piovella recalls – the ophthalmology divisions were inactive, closed. Result? Three hundred thousand cataracts have not been performed, consequently the wait for this surgery in public hospitals is now 3 years. We currently work at 60% but thus the waiting list is lengthened without the possibility of clearing up the backlog, impossible to recover “.
A burden on assistance “there is the weight of bureaucracy” adds the number one of Soi who states: “Theeye care is penalized from inadequate economic organizational models aimed only at containing expenditure, regardless of the efficacy and quality of care and from political-bureaucratic evaluations based on the lack of knowledge of the problem “. Result?” Cataract surgery – underlines Piovella -, which represents the 83% of the activity of an ophthalmology department in 20 years has gone from a reimbursement of 2,500 euros to only 700 euros, with a reduction of 70%. In the same period the cost necessary for the adoption of new digital technologies suitable to make the surgery safer to get the best visual results it has increased by 300%. ”
Cost containment “has become mandatory – recalls the expert -. In Lombardy, for example, it is so all-encompassing as to provide for the elimination of the anesthetist from the surgical team for economic reasons: it is an unreasonable and wrong bureaucratic and administrative decision and contrary to any security situation. A situation aggravated by the explosion of the Covid-19 pandemic “.
Finally: “Ophthalmology is important – concludes Piovella – it affects 60 million Italians because every person who sees well can find himself in difficulty, without realizing it. We do not expect preferential lanes but politics must listen to us. We have gone from being a non-technological specialization to a specialization with the highest digital technology in existence today, even more so than Neurosurgery. We have revolutionized diagnostic imaging, ultra-technological instruments give us the precision of one thousandth of a millimeter, but few patients use these modern instruments “.
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