Ocular Pain after Refractive Surgery

Tear Proteins Altered in Patients with Persistent Eye Pain after Refractive Surgery: Biomarker Candidate Discovery

“…In this study, we examined tear proteins from participants who report eye pain at 3 months after refractive surgery using the validated pain assessment of the NRS, 37,38 with our criterion of pain set at an NRS score of 3 or more. 22,23 We previously evaluated a larger population of refractive surgery patients and found that 11% had persistent postsurgical pain at both 3 and 6 month time points. 22 This aligns with previously reported rates of chronic nonocular postsurgical pain, which range from 10 to 70% across different types of surgeries.…”

“…22,23 We previously evaluated a larger population of refractive surgery patients and found that 11% had persistent postsurgical pain at both 3 and 6 month time points. 22 This aligns with previously reported rates of chronic nonocular postsurgical pain, which range from 10 to 70% across different types of surgeries. 39 In this prior study, we found that preoperative eye pain was a predictor of persistent pain and may indicate pre-existing conditions, which is consistent with other reports on postsurgical pain.…”

“…Individuals who had pre-existing eye pain prior to surgery were excluded from this analysis. 22 Other demographics of the selected participants including clinic site, age, sex, procedure (LASIK vs PRK), contact lens use, and Schirmer strip wet length were similar between the pain and no pain groups (Table 1). The predominance of female sex, contact lens use prior to surgery, relatively young age, and LASIK (as opposed to PRK) are representative of the clinical populations undergoing refractive surgery at the participating sites.…”

“…Strips were then placed in individual sterile 2 mL polypropylene tubes (Thermo Fisher Scientific (TFS), cat #346911, Waltham, MA, or Sarstedt, Inc., cat #72.694.006, Newton, NC) and stored at −80 °C until further processing . Information about other individual features was collected at the baseline visit including age, sex, and contact lens use. , …”

“…This included 26 participants (15 Miami, 11 Portland) with pain (defined as NRS ≥ 3) at 3 months and 94 (49 Miami, 45 Portland) participants who had no pain (defined as NRS ≤ 1) at 3 months. We used an NRS pain score of 3 to designate patients in the Pain group based on previous studies. , We excluded participants from this study who had eye pain prior to surgery (baseline NRS score >1) or who had a 3 month NRS score of 2, and individuals with tear volumes insufficient for proteomic analysis (Schirmer length ≤4 mm) (Figure , exclusion criteria). With these criteria, we selected 16 patients with eye pain at 3 months (Pain group) and 32 patients with similar demographics but no pain at 3 months as a comparator group (No Pain group; Table ).…”