Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to support consistency in the uptake of the immediate sequential bilateral cataract surgery to tackle the backlog in cataract surgery.

No such assessment has been made.

Immediate sequential bilateral cataract surgery (ISBCS) is supported by the Royal College of Ophthalmologists, who advise that ISBCS can help reduce patient visits to hospital whilst providing an optimum visual outcome, in appropriately selected and assessed patients.

Clinical commissioning groups are required to consider the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s guidelines, which state that bilateral cataract surgery should be considered for routine cases for those who are suitable, in making commissioning decisions.