A Comparative Study of Recurrence Rate in Bilateral Pterygium Surgery: Conjunctival Autograft Transplantation Versus Bare Scleral Techinque

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: When the patients with both recurrent and primary pterygia, We performed conjunctival autograft transplantation for recurrent pterygium and bare sclera technique for primary pteygium. We then compared the recurrence of each case in order to find out the usefulness of each surgery and effective mothod of surgery. METHODS: We performed follow-up on 26 eyes of 13 patients for 14 months (mean); 8 patients (16 eyes) were female, and 5 patients (10 eyes) male. The mean age of the patients was 49.5 years ranging from 37 to 63. In the operation, all patients received with 0.02% Mitomycin C for 1 minute. RESULTS: Pterygium recurred in 3 of 13 eyes which underwent bare sclera technigue, and did not recur in 13 eyes undergoing conjunctival autograft transplantation, but there was no significant difference because of a small number of study cases (P=0.07). We found postoperative complications such as corneal fila-ment and conjunctival granuloma in the case of bare sclera technique; but none in conjunctival autograft transplantation. CONCLUSIONS: We recommend a conjunctival autograft transplantation with application of low concen-tration of Mitomycin C as a safe and effective method for recurrent pterygium or pterygium with high recurrence rate.