Patient demographics, knowledge and practices towards COVID-19, PHQ-9 and GAD-9 results are displayed in Table 1–4 respectively.
During the COVID-19 outbreak, a significant number of elective cataract surgeries were postponed due to service cutdown. Out of 99 patients, 74 of them had their surgeries postponed, 34 of them were postponed by themselves while 40 of them were postponed by the cataract center. Out of the 34 patients, most of them were worried about COVID-19 while a minority could not attend due to compulsory quarantine from travelling abroad.
The PHQ-9 total score for the nine items ranges from 0–27. Using the mental health professional (MHP) reinterview as the criterion standard, PHQ-9 score ≥ 10 was used as a cut off for major depression [8]. For GAD-7, a score of 0–4 was considered to be minimal, 5–9 to be mild, 10–14 to be moderate and 15–21 to be severe [9]. Although patients who postponed the surgeries were mostly due to concern about contracting COVID-19, none of the patients who had the cataract surgeries rescheduled reached the cutoff score for major depression in PHQ-9, whereas for GAD-7, 5 patients had mild symptoms, 1 had severe symptoms of anxiety.
There was no statistically significant difference in comparing the symptoms of anxiety among patients with and without cataract surgeries postponed (p-value = 0.76). Depression symptoms could not be compared as no patients reached above the cutoff score. Subgroup analysis was performed and showed no differences in anxiety and depression symptoms in terms of gender, age (≥ 70 and < 70 years old), pre-operative visual acuity (≥ 0.1 and < 0.1).