Comparison of Corneal Astigmatism According to Varing Incision Location and Suture Method in Phacoemulsification

ABSTRACT

In order to evaluate the effects of incision location and suture method on induced astigmatism in cataract surgery, three different procedures were applied to 150 eyes which had phacoemulsification through 6 mm incision with 6 mm optic IOLs. The group 1(50 eyes) had posterior limbal incision followed by interrupted radial sutures. The group 2(50 eyes) had posterior limbal incision followed by continuous shoelace sutures. The group 3(50 eys) had scleral pocket incision at 2 - 2.5 mm apart from the surgical limbus followed by sutureless technique. The corneal astigmatism was ana lysed by algebraic and vector methods. Keratometric astigmatic changes with vector analysis on postoperative 1 day were 2.34 diopter(D), 1.41D, 0.74D in the group 1, group 2, gruop 3 respectively. There were statistically significant differences among the three groups(p<0.01). At postoperative 1 week. the keratometric astigmatic change of the group 3 was less than that of the group 1(p<0.01) and the visual acuity of the group 3 was better than that of the group 1(p<0.05). During postoperative 1 to 6 months, there was no statistically significant differences among the three groups in astigmatic changes or visual acuity. It could be concluded that scleral pocket incision with suture less technique showed significantly less astigmatism than other techniques initially, and continuous shoelace suture technique could have more stable and less astigmatism than interrupted radial suture technique.