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Most ophthalmologists write no more than 10 opioid prescriptions annually, with a mean supply per prescription of five days, according to a study published online Oct. 5 in JAMA Ophthalmology. Shriji Patel, M.D., and Paul Sternberg Jr., M.D., both from Vanderbilt Eye Institute in Nashville, Tennessee, analyzed physician and beneficiary measures using Medicare Part D Prescriber Data (2013 to 2015) to determine prescribing patterns for opioid drugs for participating ophthalmologists. The researchers found that, consistently, 88 to 89 percent of ophthalmologists wrote 10 opioid prescriptions or fewer annually. Only about 1 percent of ophthalmologists wrote more than 100 opioid prescriptions annually. On average, ophthalmologists wrote seven opioid prescriptions per year with a mean supply of five days. The six states with the highest volume of annual opioid prescriptions per ophthalmologist were in the South.

A new screening tool can adequately detect risk of diabetic retinopathy in adults with diabetes in low-income communities in Mexico, according to a study published in the October issue of Preventing Chronic Disease. Kenny Mendoza-Herrera, from the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico, and colleagues analyzed biochemical, clinical, anthropometric, and sociodemographic information from 1,000 adults with diabetes in low-income communities in Mexico in order to develop a screening tool based on a predictive model for early detection of diabetic retinopathy. Time since diabetes diagnosis, high blood glucose levels, systolic hypertension, and physical inactivity were risk factors included in the screening tool. The researchers found that the model had a mean area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC ROC) of 0.78 in the validation data set. Using the optimized cut point that best represented the study population, the model had a sensitivity of 82.9 percent and a specificity of 61.9 percent. "We developed a low-cost and easy-to-apply screening tool to detect people at high risk of diabetic retinopathy in Mexico," the authors write. "Although classification performance of our tool was acceptable (AUC ROC > 0.75), error rates (precision) depend on false-negative and false-positive rates. Therefore, confirmatory assessment of all cases in mandatory."