Intraocular lens design and the inhibition of epithelium.

Abstract

Materials and methodsAll patients who had undergone extracapsular cataract extraction with an intact capsule at surgery and insertion of a posterior chamber implant between 1981 and 1986 were called for examination two, three, and five years after surgery. Perforating injuries and secondary implantations were excluded. The age range at surgery was 29 to 94 (mean 74) years. Of the 958 patients (1170 eyes) called for review two years after surgery, 18 had moved from the district, 122 had died, and 818 were examined. Of these 197 had undergone bilateral surgery, making the total number of eyes examined 1015. By three years the death toll had risen to 17%, 17 patients (19 eyes) were untraceable, and 619 patients (741 eyes) were examined. Four hundred and fifty-eight operations were eligible for five-year follow-up, having been performed prior to 1984. Of these, 128 were lost because the patient had died (28%), 22 eyes (21 patients) were untraceable, and 308 eyes were examined.The lenses examined at two years were grouped (a) as 182 planoposterior convex anterior (CA) lenses; (b) as 431 reversed optic or convex posterior (CP) lenses; (c) as 320 lasergap lenses; and (d) as 82 biconvex hydrogel lenses made of polyhydroxyethyl methacrylate (38% water), the design of which has 918 on 9 May 2018 by guest. Protected by copyright.

Secondary cataract

“…The goal for prevention of secondary cataract formation should be to completely remove the lens epithelial cells that still remain after cataract surgery. This could be performed by cleaning the capsular bag (Meucci 1991), addition of cell growth-inhibiting substances (Ruiz et al 1990), changing the design of the intraocular lens Setty & Percival 1989), cryolysis of the capsule (Shoch & Zalta 1982;Zaturinsky et al 1990) and osmolysis of remaining epithelial cells (Dubroff et al 1991).…”