Accident and emergency eye care patients can be triaged just as safely in video consultations as face to face, a new study claims.

Researchers at Moorfields Eye Hospital compared the cases of 404 emergency patients who had video consultations with 451 who attended in person over two weeks in 2020. 

The two senior ophthalmologists found none of the patients suffered harm as a result of the way they were triaged. 

The authors of the study, published in EClinicalMedicine (Li et al, 2021), wrote that they had demonstrated “comparable patient safety” for the two approaches.