Cultures of limbal stem cells can be safely used to successfully treat massive destruction of the human cornea. We emphasize the importance of a discipline for defining the suitability and the quality of cultured epithelial grafts, which are relevant to the future clinical use of any cultured cell type.
Preliminary results up to 1 year postoperatively indicate the efficacy of I-CXL in stabilizing the progression of this degenerative disease combined with significant improvement of CDVA. I-CXL, which spares the corneal epithelium, has the potential to become a valid alternative for halting the progression of keratoconus while reducing postoperative patient pain, risk of infection, and treatment time in select patients; however, the relative efficacy of this technique compared to standard epithelium-off techniques remains to be determined.
The 1-year outcomes suggest that I-CXL might be comparable to S-CXL in stabilizing the progression of the degenerative ectatic disease. Additionally, quicker improvement of functional parameters was reported in the I-CXL group. [J Refract Surg. 2016;32(10):672-678.].
PURPOSE:
To assess the long-term efficacy and safety of epithelium-off corneal cross-linking according to the Dresden protocol (S-CXL) in progressive keratoconus.
METHODS:
Patients treated with S-CXL from April 2006 to January 2010 at Humanitas Clinical and Research Center, Rozzano, Italy, who completed at least 10 years of follow-up were included. Corrected distance visual acuity (CDVA), refraction, and corneal topography and tomography with Pentacam (OCULUS Optikgeräte GmbH) were evaluated at baseline and 10+ years after the procedure. The definition of progression after S-CXL was two of the following three criteria: increase of “A” value, increase of “B” value, or decrease of minimum thickness evaluated with the ABCD progression display above 95% CI for the post-CXL population.
RESULTS:
Twenty-seven eyes of 22 patients were included. At a mean of 11 years of follow-up (maximum 13 years), S-CXL was able to maintain CDVA and induce significant regularization of the corneal surface as demonstrated by a significant decrease of the central keratoconus index (
P
= .035) and a decrease of anterior curvature (“A” value) starting from 2.54 ± 2.46, which reduced to 1.14 ± 1.60 (
P
= .005) at 10+ years of follow-up. Two of 27 eyes included showed significant progression after S-CXL (7.4%).
CONCLUSIONS:
S-CXL was confirmed to be a safe and effective treatment for progressive keratoconus with a failure rate of 7.4% at up to 13 years of follow-up. The authors suggest the use of a combined progression system that evaluates anterior and posterior curvature and with thickness map together with the knowledge of the noise level of the testing system.
[
J Refract Surg
. 2020;36(12):838–843.]
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