Abstract
Purpose: :
To take a retrospective look at the longer term follow up of the initial 25 patients treated with intraductal meibomian gland probing (MGP) for obstructive MGD reported at ARVO 2009 meeting.
Methods: :
Charts were reviewed looking at numbers of patients with follow up, length of follow up, status of symptoms at last follow up and number of patients needing retreatment.
Results: :
Twenty four (96%) of the initial group of 25 patients had at least 6 months follow up. Follow up was by office exam in 18, phone in 3 and email in 3 patients. Seventeen patients did not need retreatment (71%). The range of follow up for non retreated patients was 6 to 26 months with average 18.4 months (SD= 5.90). The 17 patients had a total of 29 lids treated. Seven patients needing retreatment (29%), had an overall range of 6 to 25 months follow up with average 15.4 months (SD =5.91) . These seven patients had nine lids retreated with the average interval for first retreatment 8.55 months (SD= 6.19) with range of 1 to 18 months. Three of these nine lids were retreated a second time. At time of last follow up, all patients reported ongoing improvement. No patient had worse symptoms and no adverse sequelae of probing were noted.
Conclusions: :
With an average follow up of almost 1 ½ years there have been no long term adverse effects of Meibomian Gland Probing. The majority of patients in this retrospective follow up did not require retreatment by a ratio of 2.44:1.
Keywords: cornea: tears/tear film/dry eye • eyelid