Outcomes of Strabismus Surgery with or without Trainee Participation as Surgeon

Purpose To compare success rates of strabismus surgery that involves trainees versus those performed solely by staff surgeons. Design Retrospective, comparative case series. Subjects Patients undergoing eye muscle surgery for primarily horizontal deviations. Methods Retrospective comparative case series of 543 patients (921 eyes) undergoing eye muscle surgery, with or without trainee participation, for horizontal deviations. Main Outcome Measures Success in surgery defined as residual horizontal deviations of 10 prism diopters or less. Results Trainees were involved in surgeries on 396 patients (672 eyes), whereas only staff surgeons operated on 147 patients (249 eyes). After minimum follow-up of 8 weeks, there was no overall significant difference between the success rates of procedures that involved trainees as surgeons and those that did not ( P  = 0.59). Conclusions The involvement of trainees as operators in surgeries on horizontal eye muscles does not result in a worse outcome than surgeries exclusively performed by staff. With a shift toward competency-based education and more scrutiny of patient outcomes, these data further support the quality of surgical care provided by trainees.