Corneal complications related to retinal surgical patients including analysis on silicone oil use

Postoperative corneal complications from pars plana vitrectomy surgery on the retina have been studied extensively in the literature. Researchers are aware of possible issues with oil tamponades, laser techniques, and other methods used. There could be clear markers to focus on a pattern of retina diagnoses of the patients that seem more prone to these problems in the front of the eye. Studies have noted refractive issues and increased cataract or posterior capsule opacification (PCO) progression but it is inconclusive in many studies on a corneal safety standpoint. Furthermore, a 23 or 27gauge pars plana vitrectomy has varying protocols depending on the diagnosis of the retina patient including endolaser, tamponade exchange, or even endoscopic cyclophotocoagulation. This study was conducted to research data looking at varying combinations of surgical type, diagnosis, and other patient characteristics to gain statistical evidence or relative frequency to better understand what type of retinal demographics cause corneal complications. The list of corneal complications in this study include: visual distortion involving anisometropia or photophobia, increased intraocular pressure including Uveitis-Glaucoma Hyphema syndrome, allergic conjunctivitis, a lens subluxation, herpes virus (zoster or simplex), a corneal scar or lesion, neurotrophic cornea, bullous keratopathy and corneal neovascularization. This was a retrospective case study evaulating 57 patients and 58 eyes that underwent a retinal surgery, with corneal complications at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center between October 2013 to December 2016. Number of patients, systemic demographics including frequency of hypertension and diabetes, and frequency of retina surgery per eye was analyzed. Moreover, we looked at different retina diagnoses to view which groups have a higher occurrence of complications after surgery. We used silicone oil as a way to divide the corneal complication patients to determine if the use of oil had an effect on a higher rate of issues after surgery. Eyes were divided into treatment with silicone oil group (n=23) and a non-silicone oil group (n=34), and we found that the silicone group had a significantly higher frequency of retinal surgeries (p<0.001). Moreover, there was no significant evidence between certain systemic factors (p<0.05), that allowed us to include the silicone oil and non-silicone oil patients as a unified group. When looking at our retina diagnoses we saw some groups had a higher percentage of complications when we took total number of problematic postoperative outcomes and divided that by total number of surgeries. Over one quarter of the surgeries per category leading to corneal complications occurred in the categories of subluxed lens, endophthalmitis, trauma, and uveitis-glaucoma hyphema Syndrome or neovascular glaucoma. Vitreomacular traction similarly had a high percentage of patients with corneal complications. Retinal detachment and epiretinal membrane were largest quantities of a specific retinal problem with low percentages of fewer than 15% with complications postoperatively. The study found that in our patient demographic silicone oil did not seem to be a factor in causing more corneal complications but it did cause more retinal surgeries. Moreover, certain retina diagnoses seem more prone to cause challenging outcomes, which leaves room for further studies distinguishing certain factors that could cause such specific issues.

Author dc:creator

• Wayne, Erica Nicole

• Ophthalmology
• Complication
• Diagnosis
• Postoperative cornea
• Retina
• Silicone oil

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/2144/24021

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.bu.edu:2144/24021