Prophylactic treatment prevented RD in fellow eyes

Prophylactic treatment of fellow eyes after retinal detachment in one eye reduced the incidence of bilateral detachment in a study in Italy. The authors said the incidence of bilateral detachment in their study was lower than the incidence reported in the literature without prophylactic treatment of fellow eyes.

Teresio Avitabile and colleagues at the University of Catania, Italy, reviewed the charts of 760 consecutive patients with a rhegmatogenous retinal detachment (RD) in one eye and a phakic fellow eye. All eyes with RD underwent detachment surgery and follow-up ranging from 1 to 72 months, performed by the same vitreoretinal surgeon. During follow-up, predisposing retinal lesions were present in 305 fellow eyes, and prophylactic treatments were performed independently of vitreous status. Results of this series were compared to the incidence of bilateral RD without prophylaxis reported in a study by Folk and colleagues in 1982.

The age of the patients with peripheral retinal lesions was correlated inversely with the presence of myopia, the authors said. Nine of the 305 eyes treated (2.9%) developed a retinal detachment, for a rate of bilateral retinal detachment of 1.2% (of the initial 760).

“There exists a highly statistically significant difference between this study’s data of 1.2% after prophylaxis and a 13.4% rate of bilaterality as reported by Folk without prophylaxis,” the authors concluded in the March issue of Graefe’s Archive for Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology.