Nationwide trends in outpatient rates for ophthalmic surgeries in Japan before and after the COVID-19 pandemic: an analysis of the NDB open data.

This study investigated nationwide changes in outpatient rates for major ophthalmic surgeries in Japan before and after the COVID-19 pandemic and regional disparities in these changes using the National Database of Health Insurance Claims and Specific Health Checkups (NDB) Open Data. Five surgery groups were analysed: eyelid, strabismus, glaucoma, vitreoretinal, and cataract surgery. Monthly nationwide data from April 2019 to March 2023 were used to calculate outpatient surgery rates and to compare a pre-COVID period (April 2019-March 2020) with a post-COVID period (June 2020-March 2023). Prefecture-level changes were evaluated using the 5th and 9th NDB Open Data releases, and 29 individual procedures were examined. Across the five surgery groups, outpatient rates increased from 0.41 ± 0.20 to 0.47 ± 0.21 (p = 0.005). Outpatient rates rose significantly for all surgery groups, with the largest increases for glaucoma (0.300 to 0.370) and cataract surgery (0.579 to 0.641). Prefecture-level outpatient rates increased particularly for glaucoma and cataract surgery, and vitreoretinal surgery showed a larger increase in metropolitan than in non-metropolitan prefectures. Procedure-level analysis revealed marked outpatient shifts for several glaucoma, eyelid, and complex vitreoretinal procedures, indicating a nationwide shift toward outpatient ophthalmic surgery with regional and procedure-specific variation.