Assault in ophthalmic practice during COVID-19 lockdown

Correspondence

To the Editor,

We would like to share ideas on the publication “An unusual rise in cases of assault in ophthalmic practice during COVID-19 lockdown in a tertiary care hospital.[¹]” In contrast to the same period in 2019, there was a fourfold rise in assault patients during the 4 months of the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, according to Shahid et al. Most of these patients were young, male, and illiterate. Home was the most frequent scene of an incident, and fists were most frequently used as weapons of injury.[¹] Most lesions were minor and had little impact on visual acuity, according to Shahid et al.[¹] We both agree that the COVID-19 lockdown has a number of implications on medical services and the epidemiology of illness. There could be a number of causes for the rise in assault patients.[¹] In an effort to compare the incidence between the year before and the year after COVID-19, Shahid et al. The 1-year period variation, however, might merely represent an incidence fluctuation and not be connected to COVID-19. It's intriguing to wonder if the incidence has changed over the last few years. There are additional potential complicating variables. It might provide additional intriguing ideas to compare long-term data from many years before COVID-19.

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