Comparisons made between the patients presenting with R3 retinopathy
When considering “all laser” (ie, PRP, macular or combined), there was found to be a significant difference in time to laser between the ethnicities (P=0.041). Pairwise comparison showed that Asian patients waited a median of 43 days (21–272 days IQR) and White British patients waited a median of only 25 days (14–39 days IQR; P=0.043). When looking exclusively at urgent PRP for the R3 group, the time to laser was a median (IQR) of 24 days (6–32 days) for Asian patients compared to 4 days (0–16 days) for White British patients. This difference was in part due to two patients in the Asian group who had multiple appointments arranged and yet did not attend (DNA), resulting in time to laser of 567 and 589 days, respectively. If these two “outliers” were removed, then the difference in time to surgery between Asian patients and White British patients was no longer significant (P=0.118).
Within the patients presenting with R3 retinopathy there was no significant association between either time to laser and IMD score (Spearman’s correlation coefficient