Cataract surgery takes longer in functionally monocular patients.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: To determine differences in the amount of work involved in caring for functionally monocular patients who undergo cataract surgery compared with binocularly sighted patients. PATIENTS AND METHODS: This was a retrospective study that included 100 consecutive functionally monocular patients and 100 binocularly sighted control patients matched by age (+/-5 years) and date of surgery ( +/-1 year). Office records were reviewed to determine several measures of office and operating room work effort. RESULTS: There was no difference between groups in preoperative telephone calls (P = .136), postoperative telephone calls (P = .580), preoperative office visits (P = .875), postoperative office visits (P = .601), or the number of times surgery was scheduled (P = 1.00). Monocular patients required more time for surgery (37.4 minutes) than binocular patients (32.4 minutes) (P= .010). CONCLUSIONS: It takes longer to perform cataract surgery on functionally monocular patients than on binocularly sighted patients.