Background: The prevalence of vision-threatening diseases, such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and diabetic macular edema (DME), is likely to increase in developed countries owing to an aging population, rising life expectancy, and unfavorable lifestyle changes. Increases in the burden of vision-threatening diseases pose a challenge to the healthcare system. After the emergence of intravitreal anti-VEGF inhibitors, treatment options for neovascular AMD (nAMD), DME, retinal vein occlusion (RVO) and myopic choroidal neovascularization (myopic CNV) have increased. As this change in treatment practices has occurred over the last two decades, it is important to demonstrate changes in patient numbers and administered treatments to provide solutions for handling the workload and productivity in ophthalmology departments. In addition, the registry data landscape has evolved in Finland in recent years. Thus, understanding the possibilities and limitations of ophthalmology registries and patient information systems is required.

Methods: This study involved the secondary use of retrospectively registered data from the data warehouse of the Hospital District of Southwest Finland. Our goal was to explore how the workload of ophthalmology departments caused by intravitreal injections has evolved from 2015 to 2022.

Results: The ophthalmology department workload increased significantly during our observation period as the total number of patients receiving intravitreal treatments for nAMD, DME, RVO, and myopic CNV increased 199.6% from 2015 to 2021. In addition, the total number of administered anti-VEGF injections increased during our observation period, but the increase rate began to subside (2019– 2020: increase 23.7%, 2020– 2021: increase 10.3%, 2021– 2022: increase 6.7%).

Conclusion: Supporting the utilization of registry data is essential in evidence-based discussions evolving workload in healthcare. However, it is important to understand the limitations and the quality of the registries. Our study contributes to better understanding the Finnish registry perspective, and it demonstrates the increase in workload in ophthalmology departments caused by intravitreal injections.

Keywords: retina, treatment burden, aging, diabetes