The Influence Of Macular Foveola Thickness After Phacomulsification

Objective: To detect changes of macular foveola thickness followinguncomplicated phacoemulsification of senile cataract by optical coherencetomography (OCT), and study the correlation between phacoemulsification and theincidence of cystoid macular edema.Methods: 96 eyes with senile cataract from 64 patients were studied, of which33 were female and 31 male. Patients selected were between ages of 46 to 75,averaging 65.23±3.78 years old. They had no hypertension, diabetes and othersystemic diseases. All eyes suffered from no other diseases or high myopia. Asfor uncomplicated phacoemulsification and IOL implantation, all 96 eyes wereexamined by OCT to detect changes of foveola thickness in the preoperative period,postoperative 1d, postoperative 1w, and postoperative 2w respectively. A pairedt test was also performed to analyze the data and examine changes of fovealthickness in each of the four periods, so as to evaluate the impact of phacoemulsification on foveal thickness.Results: For all 96 eye surgery cases, the average rate of visual acuitycorrection stands above 0.5, or 0.8±0.23 to be exact. No surgery-inducedoccurrence of cystoid macular edema has been detected by OCT. Diopter testingfound a -0.5DS～-0.75DS myopic shift, or -0.62±0.18DS on average. 96 eyes wereexamined by OCT for detecting changes of foveola thickness after uncomplicatedphacoemulsification on senile cataract, which turned out as 176.101μm preoperatively, 176.554μm on the first day after operation, 176.502μm in the first week after operation, 179.456μm in the second week after operation. Data comparison of the preoperative and postoperative periods found no significant difference interms of foveola thickness.Conclusions: OCT is one of the most powerful tools for measuring foveola thickness.It shows that after uncomplicated phacoemulsification, there is no increase offoveola thickness or significant fluctuations in visual acuity in the ensuing 2weeks. The correlation between the best corrective visual acuity and foveolathickness at 1day, 1week, and 2weeks following phacoemulsification are -0.76,-0.78,and -0.72 respectively , which is statistically insignificant andnegligible(p<0.05). The visual consequences are in proportion with degrees offoveola thickness. Currently, there is no clinical evidence that thephacoemulsification method conduces to higher incidence of cystoid macular edema.