Study Status: Recruiting
Recruit Status: Unknown status
Study Type: Interventional
Official Title: Methods to Manage Intra-operative Floppy-iris Syndrome and Poor Pupil Dilation in Cataract Surgery: an Exploratory Study
Brief Summary:
Cataract surgery is one of the most frequently performed surgeries worldwide and complications are rare. However, there are factors that increase the risk of complications, such as poor pupil dilation and intra-operative floppy iris syndrome (IFIS). Reasons for a small pupil size are pseudoexfoliation syndrome (PXF) syndrome, uveitis or synechia and the use of pilocarpin drops. IFIS is a syndrome usually caused by systemic alpha1-blockers (foremost tamsulosin) used to treat benign prostatic hyperplasia.1,2 As described by Chang and Campbell3 IFIS is characterized by billowing of a flaccid iris stroma, a propensity for iris prolapse towards the phacoemulsification tip as well as towards the incisions and progressive intra-operative pupil constriction.
Stopping tamsulosin pre-operatively did not show to effectively prevent IFIS.4,5 However, it is of high importance to identify patients prior to surgery, who are treated with alpha1-blockers, or patients with a small pupil size and poor pharmacological pupil dilation. Some methods, such as intracameral injection of phenylephrine is only sufficient in a few cases 6, and a disadvantage is the risk of a hypertensive episode.7 Another pharmacological method is the use of atropine drops pre-operatively, but this method did not show to sufficiently reduce IFIS.4
Different methods were shown to reduce intra-operative problems due to IFIS/small pupil size:
The use of highly cohesive ophthalmic viscosurgical devices (OVD), also called viscoadaptives, such as sodium hyaluronate (e.g. AMO Healon5 or Croma Eyefill H.D.) help to viscodilate the pupil and by resting on the iris during the entire phacoemulsification procedure reduce the risk of iris prolapsing towards the incisions. This method is more dependent on a central phacoemulsificati