NHS delays responsible for glaucoma patients going blind

The Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch has claimed that patients are going blind because of long waits to see eye doctors, after a 34-year-old woman was left unable to ever see her baby.

The health watchdog has said it had found more than 150 patient-safety incidents involving eye conditions reported by the NHS between April 2017 and December 2018 for which problems with monitoring and follow-up appointments were blamed. Additionally, research has shown that as many as 22 glaucoma patients a month suffer severe or permanent sight loss because their follow-up appointments do not take place quickly enough.

The aforementioned 34-year-old patient was found to have seen seven different ophthalmologists about her sight after initially being referred by a high-street optician in 2016. She consequently lost her sight after 13 months of delayed appointments.

Established by former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to investigate systemic safety risks in the health service, the HSIB has now warned that there was inadequate capacity within hospital eye services to meet the needs of glaucoma patients.

Standards for follow-up care for glaucoma patients were published in 2009 as well as a safety report detailing incidents of harm and actions required to prevent delays. However, despite this, the HSIB stated that ‘lack of timely monitoring of patients with glaucoma has persisted as a patient safety risk’.

Keith Conradi, HSIB’s chief investigator, said: “Our patient has suffered immeasurably, living with the effects each day, including not being able to see the faces of her young children or read books to them. Despite some national recommendations being made 10 years ago, this continues to happen and will only worsen as the population ages – a 44 per cent increase in the number of people with glaucoma is predicted by the year 2035.”