Abstract
Purpose :
To present a retrospective study of the postoperative astigmatism in patients with DSAEK with a determination of anterior and posterior corneal astigmatism.
Methods :
A retrospective study of corneal astigmatism of 80 eyes of 73 patients with Fuchs Dystrophy submitted to DSAEK was performed. Postoperative total astigmatism, posterior and anterior corneal astigmatism were determined using anterior segment tomography (Scheimpflug Camera, Pentacam®), and a combined refractometer and Keratometer (Kowa KW 2000®). Central corneal thickness was evaluated with anterior segment OCT (Visante®). Careful ophthalmological follow-up examination was performed and visual acuities and refraction were recorded.
Results :
Patients were in average 68.35±11.58 years old and the majority were women (62.5%). Mean central corneal thickness was 545.43±36.2μm. Total corneal astigmatism was in average 1.19±0.67 diopters when evaluated by keratometry and 1.49±0.70 diopters when evaluated by corneal tomography. Posterior corneal astigmatism was in average 1.75±0.69 diopters. Anterior corneal astigmatism evaluation in these patients was associated with a considerable underestimation of total corneal astigmatism (0.31±0.12 dioptres; p<0.01).
Conclusions :
In patients with DSAEK, posterior corneal astigmatism is an important contributing factor for the determination of the total astigmatism. If posterior astigmatism is not considered when evaluating patients, selection of intraocular toric lenses and other refractive procedures can be incorrectly performed.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2016 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, Wash., May 1-5, 2016.