Surgical consequences in coexisting cataract and glaucoma.

Of the three classical approaches to surgery for coexisting cataract and glaucoma, last year's publications dealt with the surgical consequences of combined cataract and glaucoma operations only. When used in combined cataract and glaucoma surgery, a small-incision extracapsular cataract extraction (ECCE) with phacoemulsification (PHACO) was found to be only slightly superior to the standard manual ECCE in terms of postoperative intraocular pressure (IOP) control. Injections of 5-fluorouracil postoperatively did not improve IOP control in PHACO-ECCE-trabeculectomy or manual ECCE-trabeculectomy. A preliminary uncontrolled report suggests, however, that intraoperative mitomycin C application in PHACO-ECCE-trabeculectomy may result in excellent postoperative IOP control without antiglaucomatous medications, and with no significant mitomycin C-related complications. Controlled studies on mitomycin C application in small-incision cataract and glaucoma surgery are needed to assess its long-term effect on IOP and astigmatism.