Costly

In the December 2024 edition of the Journal of Cataract & Refractive Surgery, Dr. Scott Massa and colleagues published a study about dropless cataract surgery prophylaxis.

This is what my practice currently offers to many of our patients; an attempt to place medications on the eye at the time of surgery to decrease the need for post-operative eye drops.

We initiated this approach for reasons that include better compliance with the medication regimen, but this article notes that it decreases patient out-of-pocket medication costs. Obviously this is true, because patients don’t have to pay for eye drops at the pharmacy. With the cost of everything going up these days, that’s not trivial! It’s an additional reason for us to use our approach; if you can still do a good job and save patients money, I think it makes sense as providing holistic care for the whole patient.