Ocular related emergencies in Spain during the COVID-19 pandemic, a multicenter study

PURPOSE: To evaluate ophthalmological emergencies (OE) during the COVID-19 pandemic comparing them with the same period of the previous year. METHODS: Retrospective observational study of all OE visits in four tertiary hospitals in Spain comparing data from March 16th to April 30th, 2020 (COVID-19 period) and the same period of 2019 (pre-COVID-19 period). Severity of the conditions was assessed following Channa et al. publication. Data on demographics, diagnosis and treatments were collected from Electronic Medical Records. RESULTS: During lockdown, OE significantly declined by 75.18%, from 7,730 registered in the pre-COVID-19 period to 1,928 attended during the COVID-19 period (p < 0.001). In 2019, 23.86% of visits were classified as emergent, 59.50% as non-emergent, and 16.65% could not be determined. In 2020, the percentage of emergent visits increased up to 29.77%, non-emergent visits significantly decreased to 52.92% (p < 0.001), and 17.31% of the visits were classified as “could not determine”. During the pandemic, people aged between 45 and 65 years old represented the largest attending group (37.89%), compared to 2019, where patients over 65 years were the majority (39.80%). In 2019, most frequent diagnosis was unspecified acute conjunctivitis (11.59%), followed by vitreous degeneration (6.47%), and punctate keratitis (5.86%). During the COVID-19 period, vitreous degeneration was the first cause for consultation (9.28%), followed by unspecified acute conjunctivitis (5.63%) and punctate keratitis (5.85%). CONCLUSIONS: OE visits dropped significantly during the pandemic in Spain (75.18%), although more than half were classified as non-urgent conditions, indicating a lack of understanding of the really emergent ocular pathologies among population. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12886-021-02169-x.