Central corneal thickness changes after phacoemulsification cataract surgery

Abstract

Central corneal thickness increased by approximately 13.81% in the immediate postoperative period (at 1 hour). It remained increased by 6.44% on day 1 compared with preoperative values and gradually reduced to preoperative levels by the 1-week postoperative period (0.57% difference). Intraocular pressure (IOP) measured postoperatively in the first week may be falsely elevated to some extent because of the increased corneal thickness in the immediate postoperative period; thus, not all IOP rises have be treated in this period in healthy uncompromised eyes.

The Effect of Phacoemulsification Surgery on Corneal Endothelium

“…Change is corneal endothelial cells morphology was significant by confocal microscopy [22] but not by specular microscopy as in our study. Change in corneal thickness was minimal (2.5%) slightly more than 0.6% found by Salvi, et al [25] and similar to vasavada et al (4.3%) and Sudeep et al (1.7%). The factors which have significantly affected corneal endothelium were phaco power and ultrasound time, and elliptical motion.…”

Increased intraocular pressure on the first postoperative day following resident-performed cataract surgery

“…The central corneal thickness was reported to increase in the immediate postoperative period 6% thicker at day 1 after cataract surgery returning to the preoperative thickness at 1 week. 46 It is well known that thicker cornea in non-surgical patients causes an overestimation of IOP measured by applanation tonometry. [47][48][49] However, as the measurements compared preoperative with postoperative IOP for each individual patient rather than the mean between groups, the corneal pachymetry will have a lesser role in the variability of the values.…”

Uso de viscoelásticos na facoemulsificação em cães portadores de catarata: efeitos sobre a pressão intraocular, a morfologia das células endoteliais e a espessura corneana

“…Outros estudos em seres humanos descreveram o mesmo padrão de variação da espessura da córnea com o uso de diversos viscoelásticos, estando a metilcelulose 2% e o Viscoat ® entre eles (Salvi et al, 2007 A perda das células do endotélio é creditada a alguns aspectos do procedimento cirúrgico, tais como incisão, turbulência dos fluidos e fragmentos do cristalino, toque inadvertido no endotélio pelo instrumental e tempo de ultrassom efetivo utilizado, além da proteção efetiva proporcionada pelos viscoelásticos (Kiss et al, 2003). …”