Background: for limiting the spread of COVID-19, the Egyptian government
had declared a national lockdown on March 24, 2020 with reduction of all the
governmental medical services.
Methods: cross sectional study included 263 working ophthalmologists from
all across Egypt. They were asked to fill in a questionnaire about the changes in their
clinical practice of ophthalmology. The questionnaire was distributed as a Google
form through Emails and different social media platforms. Young ophthalmologists
(35 years) regarding
the use of technology and E-learning during the lockdown of the pandemic.
Ophthalmologists with private practice were compared to ophthalmologists without
regarding the changes in real-life clinical practice during the same period.
Results: The mean age of the participants was 45.6 y (27.0-68 y), 67.3% were
males and 52.1% were having private practice either alone or with governmental
practice. The majority of the participants (86.7%) were still seeing patients during the
lockdown, however, 96.2% of them decreased the number of their working days and
94.3% decreased the number of patients. About 47% of the participants stopped all
surgeries, 9.9% performed only emergency surgeries and 42.6% performed any
surgery. All the participants wore facial masks, 88.6% used breath shields, 55.5%
wore gloves and 59.7% started online consultations.
Experienced ophthalmologists significantly attended more scientific webinars
but for young ophthalmologists; webinars were very useful medically but not helpful
for their surgical skills.
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Conclusion: the lockdown of COVID-19 did not stop ophthalmological
practice in Egypt. It reduced the number of working days and the number of patients.
All the participants have used different PPE and half of them started online
consultations. E-learning was very useful for young ophthalmologists but it did not
help their surgical skills