Evaluation of Cystoid Macular Edema Using Optical Coherence Tomography and Fundus Fluorescein Angiography after Uncomplicated Phacoemulsification Surgery

Abstract

Macular thickness changes after uncomplicated phacoemulsification surgery and Spectral domain OCT is helpful in detecting cystoid abnormalities and any increase in macular thickness at postoperative early periods. Changes seen on OCT do not completely correlate with FFA findings.

Macular thickness changes evaluated with spectral domain optical coherence tomography after uncomplicated phacoemulsification

“…9,14 However, in our study macular thickness increase was at subclinical level with no correlation between macular thickness changes and visual acuity. Interestingly, none of the preoperative and intraoperative parameters evaluated in this study, namely axial length, anterior chamber depth, status of vitreoretinal adhesion, length of surgery, effective phaco time and phaco energy, showed any correlation with retinal thickness changes after surgery.…”

“…In previous studies, subclinical macular thickening has been reported after uncomplicated cataract surgery. [9][10][11][12][13][14] Interestingly, in our study, at day 1 after surgery, mean retinal thickness of all macular subfields of the operated eyes decreased significantly in comparison to the fellow eyes. Retinal thickness on the first post-operative day showed significant increase in two studies 9,10 and mild statistically insignificant decrease in one study.…”

“…In the literature, the incidence of qualitative alterations, namely diffuse thickening or cystic changes is reported between 5 and 41%. 14,19,20 Likely explanations for this discrepancy are the differences in patient recruitment criteria and the use of different post-operative treatment regimens. Indeed, antibiotic injection into the anterior chamber, different dosage and duration of topical steroidal therapy, and the use of topical non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents may have biased the results of some of these studies.…”

“…[6][7] Light toxicity and vitreo-macular traction may also have a role. 4,8 Optical coherence tomography (OCT) has been used to study macular changes after uncomplicated cataract surgery and the results are heterogeneous; retinal thickness is increased in some studies, [9][10][11][12][13][14] whereas in others a decrease is reported. 15 These studies are difficult to compare due to the use of different generations of OCT instruments, data analysis, post-operative treatment regimens and probably a high incidence of measurement artefacts.…”

Optical coherence tomography in patients undergoing cataract surgery

“…OCT also showed that after 180 days post-op, three eyes without DR developed mild NPDR without ME, and two eyes with moderate NPDR without ME developed moderate DR with ME. Cataract surgery has the potential to induce inflammatory and mechanical changes in vitreoretinal structures, thus causing macular thickening with changes to VA (8) , probably due to damage to the blood-retinal barrier (9,10) . Jun et al (11) evaluated 637 OCT exams (Stratus) in patients with ma cular diseases and CFT scores less than 252 µm.…”