The cataract explosion: the changing pattern of diagnoses of patients attending an ophthalmic outpatient department.

An outpatient diagnostic index was used to analyse data relating to a sample of new patients attending the Southampton Eye Hospital in 1979 and 1986. Our main findings are an increased demand for cataract surgery by an increasingly aged population and a trend towards operating on cataracts at an earlier stage in their development. These and other results are discussed.