Treatment of pterygium using thermal cautery.

Reported therapies for primary pterygium have included surgical excision with or without adjunct radiation, antimitotic agents, and conjunctival transplants. The effectiveness of these strategies may be limited by recurrences, side effects of the treatment, or expensive and time-consuming procedures. We report the results of using thermal cautery to treat primary pterygium in three patients. In all cases the pterygia were successfully eliminated without recurrence.