Abstract
Purpose: :
It remains unclear whether surgery and intraocular lens (IOL) implants will exacerbate the disease process for retinitis pigmentosa (RP) patients for long periods. This study was designed to investigate the effect of IOL implantation on the change of central 10-degree visual field in RP patients.
Methods: :
Twenty four phakic and 24 pseudophakic RP eyes that underwent central 10-2 threshold visual field (VF) testing by Humphrey VF analyzer were retrospectively investigated. VF testing was performed every six months and all subjects included had at least four VF testing. Univariate liner regression analysis was performed on the mean deviation (MD) data of each patient and calculated the slope. The mean slopes of phakic and pseudophakic groups were compared.
Results: :
The mean follow-up period for phakic eyes and pseudophakic eyes were 48.25±23 months and 49.00±25 months, respectively. Mean age of phakic group was 48.71±7.98 years and that of pseudophakic group was 57.88 ±8.42 years (P<0.001). The mean MD values at baseline were -22.00 for phakic group and -20.83 for pseudophakic group. (P=0.853).The mean slopes estimated by univariate linear regression analysis was -0.72±0.44 for phakic group and -0.69±0.70 for pseudophakic group and there was no significant difference between the groups (P=0.68). When analysis was performed among the patients whose coefficient of determination (R2) of the slope were >0.5 (15 phakic and 11 pseudophakic eyes, there was no significant difference between the slopes (phakic eyes: -0.84±0.40, pseudophakia eyes: -0.74±0.61 (P=0.98). In addition, existence of the peripheral visual field did not affect the slope derived from MD of central 10-2 VF.
Conclusions: :
Cataract surgery might have little effect in the progression of central visual field loss observed in RP. Cataract surgery can be recommended even for the advanced RP patients.
Keywords: retina • retinal degenerations: hereditary • cataract