This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

IOL design may influence posterior capsule thickness, study suggests

Add topic to email alerts

Receive an email when new articles are posted on

Please provide your email address to receive an email when new articles are posted on .

Subscribe

Added to email alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

Back to Healio

We were unable to process your request. Please try again later. If you continue to have this issue please contact customerservice@slackinc.com.

Back to Healio

Among phakic eyes with posterior capsule opacification and pseudophakic eyes without posterior chamber opacification, posterior capsule thickness may be significantly affected by IOL characteristics, according to a study by researchers in Spain.

Specifically, rigid PMMA IOLs and round-edged IOLs appear to be associated with higher posterior capsule thickness, and hydrophilic acrylic IOLs may correlate with greater posterior capsule thickness than hydrophobic IOLs.

"Posterior capsule thickness was a factor in decreased [best corrected visual acuity]," the authors said.

Javier Moreno-Montañés, MD, PhD, and colleagues at Universidad de Navarra in Pamplona used optical coherence tomography measurements obtained from 115 eyes to examine PCO and the influence of different IOL designs on PCO characteristics. Of the 115 eyes, 83 were phakic and had either fibrosis or pearl-type PCO, and 32 were pseudophakic and had no PCO. The researchers published their results in the April issue of Journal of Cataract & Refractive Surgery.

For all eyes, the investigators obtained horizontal 3-mm long OCT scans of the posterior capsule, peak posterior capsule intensity and posterior capsule thickness at three scan points. Subsequently, the posterior capsule intensity and posterior capsule thickness were compared with BCVA and IOL data.

The posterior capsule thickness was high for round-edged IOLs (P = .001) and PMMA IOLs (P < .001), the authors noted.

The posterior capsule thickness was higher if the IOL optic was concave-convex than if the optic was biconvex (P = .001), they added.

Hydrophilic acrylic IOLs had higher posterior capsule thickness than hydrophobic acrylic IOLs (P = .04).

"Multivariate analysis of [posterior capsule thickness] showed that PMMA was the only factor statistically associated with [posterior capsule thickness] (P = .02)," the authors said.

While lower logMAR BCVA showed a significant correlation with higher posterior capsule thickness value (P < .001), lower logMAR BCVA showed no significant correlation with posterior capsule intensity (P = .42), according to the study.

The investigators found a direct correlation between 12.5-mm IOLs and fibrosis-type PCO (P = .04).