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Studies disagree about long-term flattening in keratoconic children treated with cross-linking
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MILAN — Long-term follow-up of children with keratoconus found that corneal cross-linking was an effective treatment, but studies disagree about the long-lasting effect of flattening, a clinician said here.
Farhad Hafezi, MD, PhD, presented a clinical update on his and his colleagues' study on corneal cross-linking in children at the EuCornea congress.
Farhad Hafezi
"What we've seen now is significant changes in visual acuity after 2 years and after 3 years. We've seen significant flattening after 2 years, but in our data, the evidence shows loss of significance at 3 years," he said.
He compared the results with a recent study by Caporossi and colleagues that found lasting results for more than 3 years in children who received cross-linking.
Hafezi and colleagues conducted a retrospective interventional cohort study of 46 eyes of 42 patients with progressive keratoconus. Average patient age was approximately 16 years old, with average follow-up of 26.3 months.
Hafezi also presented results from 59 young eyes with keratoconus in a pre-selected group, of which 52 showed progression and underwent cross-linking. Treating as soon as the diagnosis was made was important in those cases, he said.
"I would not wait for documented progression anymore," he said. "I will document the existence of keratoconus … and then treat immediately."
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Disclosure: Hafezi has no relevant financial disclosures.