Spectacle use after routine cataract surgery: a study from the Swedish National Cataract Register

Purpose To explore patients' obtaining and use of spectacles after routine cataract surgery. Methods The study included 1329 patients who underwent bilateral surgery with the second eye operated during March 2013 at 38 different clinics in Sweden. Five months after the second‐eye surgery, patients completed a five‐item questionnaire about their spectacle use preoperatively and postoperatively. The responses were linked to data from the registry on multiple variables including postoperative refraction, age and gender. Results Of the 387 patients who were advised by their surgeons to obtain distance spectacles postoperatively, most did so (77.3%, n = 299), while of the 691 patients who were not so advised, most did not obtain spectacles (78.9%, n = 545). Nevertheless, almost 50% of patients with both spherical and cylindrical errors exceeding 1 dioptre (D) did not obtain new distance spectacles postoperatively, while about 25% of patients with bilateral emmetropia (spherical error