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

Persistent diplopia after cataract surgery associated with injection anesthesia

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

MADRID, Spain — Persistent diplopia after cataract surgery is caused predominantly by direct damage to the inferior rectus muscle in retrobulbar anesthesia injection, according to a large retrospective study.

J.I. Gómez-Arnau and others here at the Fundación Hospital Alcorcón reviewed the charts of 3,587 patients who underwent cataract surgery. Of these, 137 were performed by extracapsular extraction and the rest were phacoemulsification. Retrobulbar block was used in 2,024 cases, peribulbar block in 98, topical anesthesia in 1,420 and general anesthesia in 43.

Twenty-six cases of persistent diplopia were found (incidence rate of 0.72%), nine of which were considered to be related to anesthetic factors. Five cases were caused by paresis of the inferior rectus muscle and three by fibrosis. In one patient, the inferior oblique muscle was affected. Anesthesia was by retrobulbar block in eight cases and by peribulbar block in one.

None of the patients who received either general or topical anesthesia developed diplopia.

The study is published in the February issue of British Journal of Anaesthesia.