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Incidence of microbial keratitis after laser vision correction low
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SEATTLE —The incidence of microbial keratitis after laser vision correction is one in 6,300 patients, according to a poster presented here.
Steven C. Schallhorn, MD, told Ocular Surgery News at the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology meeting that he and colleagues were able to calculate this incidence by using a large cohort of consecutive patients who underwent refractive surgery from January 2008 to December 2012.
Of 418,229 eyes in 214,392 consecutive patients, microbial keratitis was diagnosed in 38 eyes of 34 patients. Of the 40,363 eyes that underwent PRK, 11 cases of microbial keratitis were diagnosed, for an incidence of 0.03%; of 377,866 eyes that underwent LASIK, 27 cases of microbial keratitis were diagnosed, for an incidence of 0.01%.
Patients who underwent PRK had four times the likelihood of microbial keratitis infection than patients who underwent LASIK, Schallhorn said.
An unexpected finding, he said, was that use of a mechanical keratome was more likely to be associated with infection than use of a femtosecond laser. In the LASIK cases, of 111,695 eyes in which a mechanical keratome was used, 13 cases of microbial keratitis were diagnosed, for an incidence of 0.02%. In the 266,171 eyes in which a femtosecond laser was used, 14 cases were reported, for an incidence of 0.01%.
Overall, however, the incidence was low, Schallhorn said, and visual outcomes after infection were good. Nearly 76% of patients with infection achieved 20/20 or better best corrected visual acuity compared with nearly 97% of control patients.
Disclosure: Schallhorn has no relevant financial disclosures.