Visual acuity in patients having cataract surgery by different techniques.

BACKGROUND

Question of different techniques of cataract surgery would offer different post-operative visual acuity (VA) has been asked.

OBJECTIVES

To compare the pre-and post-operative VA of cataract patients operated by different techniques as Extracapsular Cataract Extraction (ECCE), Phacoemulsification (PE), and Manual Phaco Fragmentation (MPF) and compare in different age groups.

METHOD

The post-operative visual acuity of cataract patients was collected from 72 hospitals in Bangkok and rural part of Thailand. Techniques of cataract surgery were recorded. The cases with pre-operative and intraoperative complication and cases operated without intraocular lens (IOLs) implantation were ruled out.

RESULTS

VA of cataract patients post-operation was statistically significant better than pre-operation at p-value (less than 0.05) and the result persisted for every age group. Cataract patients operated by PE had better post-operative VA than patients operated by ECCE and MPF even if MPF had the best post-operative VA. This is because the total cases were less than the other procedure.

CONCLUSION

Due to the nature of retrospective study, the cause of poor post-operative VA was due to astigmatism. The pre-operative astigmatism was not recorded thus preventing a complete analysis.