Clinical Results of Phacoemulsification with Scleral Pocket Incision in Diabetic Patients

ABSTRACT

We compared the visual outcome after phacoemulsification through the scleral pocket incision between non-diabetic patients and diabetic patients, and studied the factors influencing the visual outcome and postoperative complications in diabetic patients. retrospectively. The subjects operated by one of the authors were composed of 277 non-diabetic patients (277 eyes) and 90 diabetic patients (113 eyes). An average of the best corrected visual acuities at postoperative 8 weeks was lower in diabetic patients than that in non-diabetic patients, but there was no statistically significant difference between diabetic patients who had no or background diabetic retinopathy and non-diabetic patients. In diabetic patients the visual outcome was significantly related with severity of diabetic retinopathy, duration of the diabetes, and insulin dependency, but not related with the rupture of posterior capsule during surgery. Among the complications there were posterior capsule rupture (10.6%), hyphema (7.8%), posterior capsular opacity (4.9%), and posterior synechiae (4.9%).