Endophthalmitis after cataract surgery: epidemiology, clinical features and antibiotic prophylaxis

Abstract Purpose To estimate the incidence of endophthalmitis after cataract surgery and to describe the main epidemiological and clinical data, as well as the role of intracameral antibiotics. Methods A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted on patients who underwent cataract surgery in a public hospital over an 11-year period. An ocular infection database was used to report endophthalmitis occurrences and to collect the clinical features. Qualitative variables are described with their frequency distribution and qualitative variables, with the mean and the standard deviation. Results From January 1999 to December 2009, 15.173 patients underwent cataract surgery. A total of 43 patients suffered from postoperative endophthalmitis, giving an overall infection rate of 0.28% (95% CI: 0.20–0.36%). Among the 43 cases, there were 19 men and 24 women with a mean age of 78.5. Other clinical parameters evaluated were as follows: 25.58% were diabetic, 44.18% had some degree of immunosuppression and there were complications with posterior capsular tears in 18.6%. As regards antibiotic prophylaxis, 2 groups were considered: the first one did not receive intracameral antibiotic (8,099 patients) and the second group received intracameral cefuroxime (7,074 patients). There were 39 endophthalmitis in the first group with an infection incidence of 0.48% and 4 endophthalmitis in the second group with an infection incidence of 0.056%. The relative risk (RR) after-before cefuroxime was 0.12 (0.04–0.33) with P  Conclusions The incidence of endophthalmitis after cataract surgery in an 11-year period was lower than 0.3%. Almost half of the patients had a higher systemic risk. Intracameral cefuroxime resulted in nearly a 9-fold reduction in the rate of infection.