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Femtosecond laser-assisted PK provides fast wound healing, visual rehabilitation
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ROME — Use of the IntraLase FS femtosecond laser for penetrating keratoplasty has been successful, according to three surgeons speaking here on the topic.
Elisabetta Böhm, MD, of Venice, Emilio Balestrazzi, MD, of Rome, and Lucio Buratto, MD, of Milan, all said they have had great success using the laser for PK..
“We are having excellent and very stable outcomes with this method. Visual rehabilitation is surprisingly faster compared with standard PK,” Dr. Böhm told attendees at the OSN Rome Symposium.
Dr. Böhm said the laser cut is programmed by special software, based on the pachymetry of the donor and recipient corneas. The laser performs the top-hat-shaped cut from the inside out, starting with a vertical cut from the endothelial level, then moving horizontally towards the center of the cornea, then vertically again up through the epithelium, she said.
“The very smooth surfaces produced by the femtosecond laser allow perfect adherence between the donor graft and the recipient bed, which makes wound healing much faster,” she said. “The shape of the cut, with the intermediate horizontal step between the endothelial and epithelial layers, creates a wider contact surface, which produces a better and more stable fitting of the graft into the patient’s cornea and therefore a higher resistance of the eye to trauma.”
Sutures should not be too tight, but deep enough to penetrate almost the full thickness of the flange of the donor graft and stretch it to make it fit tightly into the corresponding space of the recipient bed, she added.
The OSN Rome Symposium is a meeting held jointly by Ocular Surgery News, the Italian Society of Ophthalmology, the Italian Association of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons and the International Society of Refractive Surgery/American Academy of Ophthalmology.