role of mitomycin drug in the prevention of pterygium recurrence after surgical removal

ABSTRACT

This study was carried out on 100 eyes of 100 patients with primary pterygium attending the Outpatient Ophthalmology Clinic of Alexandria University Hospitals. All eyes had their pterygium excised with a standard bare sclera technique and then the eyes were randomized to four groups each comprising 25 eyes. Group A received mitomycin eye drops in a concentration of 0.04% one drop four times daily for 14 days. Group B received mitomycin eye drops 0.02% one drop four times daily for 14 days. Group C received mitomycin eye drops 0.02% one drop twice daily for 5 days and group D received balanced salt solution one drop four times daily for 14 days and this group acted as a control. The eyes were followed up for a maximum of 32 weeks to record differences between the four groups regarding corneal and conjunctival wound healing time, incidence of complications and incidence and timing of recurrence as well as to delineate the statistical significance of any differences obtained with any of the variables studied, in addition to a correlation analysis for the incidence of recurrence versus a number of selected variables. The study showed that there was a statistically significant difference regarding conjunctival wound healing time between the four groups [p = 0.000], incidence of complications by score [p = 0.005] and incidence of recurrence [p = 0.001]. Recurrence was found to correlate significantly only with conjunctival healing time [p = 0.01] with a negative type of correlation. It was shown that the best regimen for topical postoperative application of mitomycin eye drops would be that of 0.02% twice daily for 5 days producing optimal conjunctival healing time, least complications and a fairly very low incidence of recurrence