Exudative age-related macular degeneration, diabetic macular oedema and retinal vein occlusion causing macular oedema are all important and common causes of blindness. Anti-VEGF intravitreal injections are gold standard treatment for these diseases, and require multiple timely injections to achieve disease control and to restore vision. As the incidence of these diseases increase in our ageing population, our healthcare system has come under immense pressure to provide timely and sustainable intravitreal injection therapy for all our patients.
To reduce the waiting time for our patients, we have introduced a new nurse-delivered injection service, which has been shown in other countries to safely and effectively increase intravitreal injection capacity. We developed a comprehensive training program for nurses, and designed a double-blind cross-over study that compared outcomes between nurse-delivered and doctor-delivered intravitreal injections. This presentation will present the results of the study, in particular the safety outcomes and patient satisfaction rates.
