Abstract
Abstract: :
Purpose: Cigarette smoking is known to impair normal wound healing response. We wished to determine if smoking tobacco altered the visual and anatomic outcome of retinal detachment (RD) repair. Methods: A retrospective review of consecutive primary RD repair surgery was performed on 110 patients. We excluded patients with diabetes, trauma and endophthalmitis associated detachments. 23 Patients with detachments treated elsewhere previously were also excluded. There were a total of 21 (24.1%) smokers (mean age: 57.914.7), 66 (75.9%) were nonsmokers (mean age: 57.814.6; Student's t-Test for age, P=0.9927). Results: There was no significant difference in pre-operative visual acuity between smokers and nonsmokers these two groups of initial visual acuities (Student's t-Test, P=0.99). However, postoperatively, the mean visual acuity among smokers was significantly worse logMAR 0.80.7, compared to nonsmokers was logMAR 0.40.4, P=0.037. In addition, smokers had a significantly higher risk of developing visual acuity of counting fingers or worse post-operatively, P=0.002. Finally, there was a trend for smokers to have a higher re-operation rate 14.3% (3/21) for smokers and 4.5% (3/66) for non-smokers, Chi-square test, p=0.13. Conclusion: The data suggests that smokers have a worse visual and anatomical prognosis than non-smokers following RD repair.
Keywords: 563 retinal detachment • 353 clinical (human) or epidemiologic studies: outcomes/complications • 628 vitreoretinal surgery