Effects of Air in Cases that Leak from Scleral Incision of Temporal Incision Sutureless Cataract Surgery

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: The study was done to evaluate the sealing effect of air on wound leakage, on the cornea and on the postoperative changes of corneal astigmatism in cases that leak from scleral incision due to incompletion of internal corneal lip. METHODS: 30 eyes of 29 patients among 6.0 mm temporal incision and sutureless cataract surgery from December 1997 to October 1998 were examined for the study. RESULTS: The mean preoperative and postoperative 1 day intraocular pressures were 13.45 and 13.19 mmHg. In postoperative 2 months, the corneal endothelial cell loss was about 15%. The mean uncorrected visual acuity of postoperative 1, 2 weeks and 1, 2, 3 months was 0.53, 0.56, 0.56, 0.68 and 0.58, respectively. And the mean best corrected visual acuity of those periods was 0.76, 0.84, 0.80, 0.87 and 0.93, respectively. There was decreasing postoperative corneal astigmatism of the same period such as 0.90, 0.63, 0.68, 0.51 and 0.41 diopter with the rule change. CONCLUSIONS: We suggest that when the leakage occurs due to incompletion of internal corneal lip, but the anterior chamber somewhat remains for 6.0 mm incision sutureless cataract surgery to reduce previous astigmatism, injection of air rather than the use of sutures provides the advantage of sutureless cataract surgery as well as the sealing effect upon wound leakage.