“The ophthalmologist protects the sight of everyone, especially children and elderly people. Ophthalmology Day is a moment of attention and sharing dedicated to overcoming the difficulties of Italian ophthalmology today and aims to positively inform institutions and patients on the new extraordinary treatment opportunities available today. Italian ophthalmologists work every day with skill and dedication to safeguarding sight”. Thus Matteo Piovella, president of the Soi, Italian Ophthalmological Society, on the occasion of World Sight Day recalls that “the 7 thousand Italian ophthalmologists save the sight of over 2 million people every year, with competence, ability and spirit of service, in conditions that are often difficult because today there is difficulty in adopting innovative technologies and diagnostic imaging”.
This context includes the activation of the toll-free number 800588653, of social utility, to which the Soi ophthalmologists respond to give information and reassurance to citizens, but also the round table of experts to activate a direct line with the institutions and patients with the aim of addressing the difficulties that ophthalmology encounters today with positive proposals for the benefit of vulnerable individuals. Among the most urgent issues in the sector – we read in a note – stand out the long waiting lists, the lack of specialist doctors employed in the National Health Service, obsolete machinery, diagnostic tests carried out not at the same time as the eye examination.
“Ophthalmology – underlines Piovella – today presents extraordinarily effective treatment opportunities that must be made available to everyone. The evolution of the specialist visit allows, with a single access, prevention, diagnosis, prescription of lenses and pharmacological therapy, identify visual potential and future evolutions diagnose and treat amblyopia, cataracts, retinal detachment, maculopathies and refractive visual defects, elevated to a social disease in the seventies. Prevention is the best way to treat oneself”, he adds President Soi recalling that the scientific society has been promoting the ‘Sight Saving Calendar’ for 15 years. In detail, an eye examination is recommended: at birth; within 3 years of age; the first day of school; from 9 to 14 years, to counteract the onset of myopia which is now almost epidemic in children, therefore – Piovella lists – we move on to 40 years with a visit every 2 years. From age 60, once a year for life. In the case of eye surgery, it is advisable to undergo an eye examination every year.”
Today “at a public level – recalls the Soi president – there is a wait of 12 months to carry out an eye examination and over 2 years to be able to undergo sight-saving cataract surgery. Waits that are managed bureaucratically without worrying about the health consequences. A year of waiting for a specialist eye examination is a non-service. The situation has now spread to the whole of Italy possibility of cure”.
Particular, Piovella points out, is “the drama of patients suffering from maculopathy and at risk of vision loss: only 30% of visits are provided compared to what happens in France, Germany and England. Ophthalmology today has many tools to improve these critical issues The solutions are complex, but possible. Over the last twenty years we have had fantastic technological and technical evolution, but the resources to acquire these technologies in public service hospitals have not been made available.”
This is why we need “more economic resources, less bureaucracy, elimination of healthcare economic managers. In Italy – concludes Piovella – one million sight-saving surgeries are carried out every year by applying an outpatient organizational model with the benefit of patients and reduction of waiting lists The Lombardy Region, for example, has decided to eliminate outpatient surgery to protect supporters and defend the lack of surgical quality provided in its hospitals, for economic reasons, it has even eliminated the anesthesiologist for ophthalmic surgery. multiplying the intraoperative complications by 3. The only result was a lengthening of the waiting lists and a vertical drop in the quality of the surgery provided. Patients know nothing moreover, non-competitive, they remain an indelible stain on the image of the Region”.