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SMILE procedure promising for myopia correction, study finds
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Small-incision lenticule extraction demonstrated positive results in patients with myopia, according a study recently published in Optometry and Vision Science.
Xu and colleagues evaluated the safety, efficacy, stability and predictability of the SMILE method in their study.
Researchers assessed 52 patients with myopia preoperatively as well as at 1 day, 2 weeks and 1, 3, 6 and 12 months postoperatively. Specifically, they monitored changes in intraocular pressure, dry eye signs, higher-order aberrations, central corneal thickness and subjective glare symptoms.
Results showed that, at the final follow up, 90.4% of the eyes that underwent the SMILE procedure were within 0.5 D and 98.1% of eyes were within 1 D of the intended refractive target. The researchers also reported that 83% of eyes had an uncorrected visual acuity better than or equal to 20/20, and 98% had a best-corrected visual acuity of better than or equal to 20/20.
"Our results revealed that the SMILE procedure for the correction of myopia and myopic astigmatism was predictable, stable, effective and safe," the authors stated. "Compared with other studies on refractive lenticule extraction procedures, we treated more patients (103 eyes) and followed them for a longer period (12 months). This served to increase the statistical power of our subset analysis."
They continued: "The progressively improving results with each published study suggest that there is a learning curve and an improvement in SMILE techniques. There have been minor complications previously reported, including epithelial abrasions, tears at the incision edge, difficult lenticule extraction, trace haze, minor interface infiltrates and nonprogressive epithelial ingrowths. In our study, we did not observe any of these complications, although two cases experienced suction loss during the procedure.
“We believe that surgical technique is very important, especially centration,” the researchers said. “When redocking, good centration can maintain a consistently stable cutting surface. Furthermore, good centration in SMILE ensures that the correction area is even and that the femtosecond laser cuts are in the same horizontal layer of corneal stroma. This is necessary to easily separate the lenticule and allow for the easy removal of ocular debris."
Disclosure: The authors have no relevant financial disclosures.
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