gms | German Medical Science

Purpose: To examine the relationship between surgeon experience and success rates in retinal detachment surgery.

Methods: Success rates during a follow-up of 11 months of eight surgeons who performed in total 375 retinal detachment procedures ranging from 14 to 115 cases between December 1997 and January 2002 where correlated to the total number of vitreoretinal procedures ranging between 176 and 2,587. All patients received either scleral buckling or vitrectomy, complicated cases were excluded.

Results: Mean final success rates were 0.69±0.14 for scleral buckling and 0.9±0.05 for primary vitrectomy (p<0.05). The final success rates did not correlate to the number of vitreoretinal procedures. 7 of the 8 surgeons showed an intraindividual learning effect with better success rates in the second vs. the first half of the observed procedures. The learning effect was correlated to the total number of procedures with a higher effect in unexperienced surgeons.

Conclusion: An intraindividual learning effect that was higher in inexperienced surgeons could be demonstrated. The learning effect was reduced by half after 500 vitreoretinal procedures while the final success rates were not correlated to the number of vitreoretinal procedures.