Introduction:

Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP) is one of the main preventable causes of blindness in childhood. The Vision Foundation implemented the Prevention, Detection and Treatment Program in 2015.

Objective:

To describe the implementation results and the outcomes achieved by a ROP program regarding its accessibility, effectiveness and quality of care. Materials and Methods: This was a descriptive and ambispective study of consecutive cases of premature newborns with criteria for evaluation, of a population evaluated in the year 2009 and from 2015 to 2019.

Results:

The participating neonatal units increased from 3 to 7; covering Asunción, the Central, Caaguazú and Alto Paraná Departments. From the records, it was found that program coverage increased from 36% in 2009 to 97% in 2019. Since the beginning of the program, during the first year the proportion of the number of evaluations increased between 28 and 218%; the global results from July 2015 to December 2019 were: total number of patients with criteria: 2397 patients; total number of patients evaluated: 2,080 (88%), number of patients with ROP: 416/2080 patients (20 %), number of patients with ROP requiring treatment: 76/416 patients (18.3%), overall proportion of severe ROP with treatment: 76/2080 patients (3.4%).

Conclusions:

The program, using a multidisciplinary team and the innovation of telemedicine, managed to increase the proportion of coverage and the reduction of serious cases that require treatment.

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