Posters

Anterior segment OCT changes following transepithelial PRK vs conventional PRK for myopic patents

Poster Details

First Author: A.Rashed EGYPT

Co Author(s):                        

Abstract Details

Purpose:

Compare the OCT findings ,using Visante OCT ,following Transepitelial PRK(TransPRK) procedure versus Conventional PRK in mild to moderate cases of myopia,as regards to healing and corneal epithelial integrity. Asses also the visual improvement, time of corneal healing, and degree of discomfort immediate postoperatively in both groups operated.

Setting:

Opthalmology Department,Faculty of Medicine,Cairo University.

Methods:

60 eyes of 30 patients were included in this study. Mean Age was 27±2.5,55% of the patients were females,45% males. MRSE was -3.50±0.75 D.Corneal topography and anterior segment OCT was done preoperatively for all patients.15 were randomly selected for TranspPRK, and the other 15 for conventional. The procedure was performed on Schwind Amares 500 E platform for all cases..For conventional PRK cases, the patients' epithelia was removed by corneal epithelial spatula, and nomogram based LASIK was applied.For TransPRK,the non-touch technique from the start ablation of epithelium followed by stroma was applied using the standard Schwind parameters for that.

Results:

Anterior segment OCT with Visante was performed 1 day postoperatively with contact lens on, and then 1 week after with contact lens removed.TransPRK showed better and quicker epithelial healing in comparison with conventional PRK, taking ±1 day less to completely heal in 80%(12 patients) of the TransPRK group. Consequently, the discomfort time of pain and lacrimation that usually accompanies surface ablation was less in the TransPRK group. As regarding BCVA, no statistically significant difference was recorded between the two group of patients. No cases of haze were reported on long term follow up.

Conclusions:

TransPRK showed faster and smoother epithelial healing than conventional type, superiorizing it as a stronger modification in surface ablation techniques. Also epithelial healing time was significantly shorter in TransPRK, subsequently minimizing the time of patient discomfort. Further multiceneter studies should be carried expanding the number operated upon to confirm it as the new faster standard effective surface ablation surgery.

Financial Disclosure:

None