The Optometric Trends Discovery Group (OTDG) Survey was launched on February 4, 2023. The survey included 141 questions developed and reviewed with the OTDG leadership board. The survey questions explored doctors’ understanding and current practice patterns across a number of areas of optometric care, including presbyopia, astigmatism, corneal therapeutics, ocular surface disease, glaucoma, lid management, corneal refractive surgery, dry AMD and geographic atrophy, and myopia management. Nearly 300 optometrists responded to the survey which was closed in mid-March 2023.

The survey found that only 11% of referred comanage patients received toric intraocular lenses (IOLs). We asked Dr. Cecelia Koetting, a cataract surgery co-management specialist and an OTDG Board member who helped shape the survey, what he thinks of this data. She felt this statistic feels surprisingly low considering the number of patients who could potentially benefit from these lenses. Typically, toric IOLs are utilized in patients with 1.25 or more diopters of corneal astigmatism. To better interpret this data, it would be helpful to compare the 11% with the actual percentage of patients that meet that threshold. Yet, even without this comparison, signs of under-correction are evident.

As shown in the figure above, 62% of surveyed doctors start recommending toric IOLs at 1.0 or 1.5 D of astigmatism (1.25 D was not an option), leaving the remaining 38% to either set a higher threshold for recommending toric IOLs at 2.0 D or higher (30%) or abstain from recommending a specific IOL type at all (8%). According to Dr. Koetting, this trend mirrors the historic propensity for under-correction of astigmatism among optometrists, even when prescribing toric contact lenses.1

For the full report on cataract surgery co-management, or to explore additional reports on various topics with insights from the OTDG leadership board, please visit the Knowledge Center at tfgeducation.com.