According to a recently published report, it has been suggested that an increase in the intraocular pressure (IOP) during femtosecond laser-assisted cataract surgery (LASIK) does not have any harmful effects on patients with glaucoma.
In a study involving 25 eyes from 19 patients conducted between October 2014 and January 2015, including 12 eyes with and 13 eyes without glaucoma, the IOP was measured before, during and after suction with a portable Perkins device after LASIK surgery in younger patients. The mean suction time was 5 minutes, extending up to 9 minutes in a few cases. Data was also measured a week and a month later after the surgery. No significant differences were observed in the IOP before and after suction, or in a week or a month post surgery.
Spectral domain Optical Coherence Tomography (SD-OCT) was performed to check for ganglion cell changes, which showed no difference, even in terms of macular thickness.
The only drawback of this study were the effects on elderly patients with glaucoma, which are still unclear as mostly younger patients were evaluated.
Dr. Ianis Marcireau, MD, commented on the study during the meeting of the French Society of Ophthalmology, saying, “Our study was a randomized, prospective study carried out between October 2014 and January 2015. Each patient had femtosecond laser-assisted surgery using the Victus femtosecond laser (Bausch + Lomb) in one eye and conventional phacoemulsification in the other eye. There was quite a lot of time variability in between patients, likely depending on the learning curve.”
