Correction of High Corneal Astigmatism during Cataract Surgery

Abstract

Patients, who need cataract surgical treatment, often fail to achieve a high uncorrected visual acuity after surgery due to the concomitant astigmatism involved. Currently, surgeons are increasingly performing combined surgical interventions, including relaxing limbal keratotomic incisions (manual keratotomy) or femtoarcuatous keratotomy, as well as implanting toric intraocular lenses. In recent years, additional toric intraocular lenses have been available. Purpose: to analyze our own clinical experience of implanting an additional toric intraocular lens to correct corneal astigmatism in three clinical cases. The article presents our clinical experience of successful correction of residual corneal astigmatism after previous cataract phacoemulsification with the implantation of a monofocal toric intraocular lens in three patients patients aged 70, 61 and 54 years. In all cases, an additional toric intraocular lens Add-on Torica-sPB pre-filled in the cartridge with a good refractive effect was implanted. The uncorrected visual acuity was 1.0 in all the investigated cases at the follow-upo period of 6 months after the surgical intervention. Calculation of the toric intraocular lens optical power was performed using an online calculator. A feature of surgical intervention was the repositioning of the additional toric intraocular lens into the ciliary sulcus. Changes in the data of keratotopography before and after surgery were absent. In none of the investigated cases, intra- and postoperative complications and dislocation of the implanted additional toric intraocular lens were determined. Based on these cases, high predictability, efficacy and safety of implantation of an additional toric intraocular lens are shown, in the case of residual middle-grade corneal astigmatism after the initial cataract phacoemulsification with the toric intraocular lens implantation. This approach can be successfully used in patients during one-stage surgical treatment of cataract and associated high-grade corneal astigmatism, expanding existing protocols for the treatment of this group of patients.