No abstract

No abstract

SUMMARY A technique is described for producing an iridotomy in the treatment of closed-angle and secondary glaucoma using a single pulse from a dye laser. It was successful in 28 out of 32 eyes treated, and no significant complications were encountered.Previous publications (Perkins and Brown, 1973;Brown, 1977) have shown that it is possible to produce a functioning iridotomy with a combination of argon and ruby lasers. This had the advantage of being an outpatient procedure, particularly useful for cases in which conventional surgery was contraindicated, but had the disadvantage that several treatments were required to achieve complete penetration of the iris. Theoretical studies (Wheeler, 1977) and animal experiments indicated that lasers with a shorter pulse, such as that from a dye laser, would produce a complete iridotomy with 1 pulse (Bass et al., 1977). This method has been used on 32 eyes of 28 patients in most of whom conventional surgery was contraindicated. Four patients had both eyes treated, 1 being a case of Marfan's syndrome (Table 1). MethodsTwo tunable dye lasers were used: Electrophotonics Model 33 and Electrophotonics Model 43. The dyes employed to date were (1) cresyl violet, (2) rhodamine 640; both of these were in a pure methanol solution and tuned to X 633 nm; (3) rhodamine 6G (? 590 nm) and coumarin 102 (X 488 nm), which were prepared initially in solution with methanol and subsequently in a methanol/water mixture of 1: 1.

No abstract

No abstract