Physician-Patient Face Masking’s Influence on Post-Intravitreal Injection Endophthalmitis Rates

Abstract

Purpose: We sought to determine if universal face mask guidelines implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic significantly influenced the incidence of endophthalmitis following intravitreal injections (IVI). Methods: This retrospective cohort study reviewed the electronic health records from a retina-only practice located in Michigan. The study evaluated patients receiving IVIs over two distinct time periods of April 2019-March 2020, and April 2020-March 2021, which made up our unmasked and masked groups, respectively. We then calculated the incidence of endophthalmitis following IVI and evaluated cases of post-injection endophthalmitis for both time periods. Results: There were a total of 121,384 intravitreal injections performed over the two year period of interest. Of these, there were 63,114 unmasked and 58,270 masked patient encounters. A total of 46 post-injection endophthalmitis cases were identified. Of these, 29 cases were from the unmasked period and 17 were from the masked period. This resulted in an incidence of endophthalmitis of 0.046% and 0.038% in the masked and unmasked groups, respectively. This difference did not rise to the level of statistical significance (p=0.1336). Conclusion: This study suggests that the incidence of post-injections endophthalmitis was not influenced by the implementation of ophthalmologist-patient face masking after intravitreal injection during the COVID-19 pandemic.