Abstract
Purpose :
The choice of ophthalmic viscosurgical device (OVD) may impact surgery success, postoperative outcome, and patient satisfaction. We tested whether surgeons perceived differences in terms of expression, visualization, aspiration, and manipulation between a new cohesive OVD (StableVisc, Bausch+Lomb Surgical) and a cohesive OVD with a proven safety record (ProVisc, Alcon Vision LLC) during wet lab cataract surgery.
Methods :
Porcine eyes were mounted and positioned under a surgical scope. Six qualified surgeons performed standard cataract surgery by phacoemulsification, implanted a silicone posterior IOL, cleared the anterior chamber via aspiration, and used StableVisc or ProVisc during the surgery. Three surgeries were conducted with each OVD by each surgeon. During each surgery, surgeons graded the performance of each OVD (1=excellent to 5=unacceptable) on the following attributes: ease of (1) OVD extrusion, (2) visco dissection, (3) movement of cannula in the eye, (4) OVD distribution within the anterior chamber, (5) visualization through the OVD, (6) compatibility of OVD with an inserter, (7) functional use of OVD with IOL delivery, (8) chamber space maintenance during IOL delivery, (9) ease of OVD removal from anterior chamber, (10) overall performance of OVD against design/expectation, and (11) comparison against controls. The data were averaged and summarized.
Results :
The data of 6 surgeons were pooled across 9 wet lab surgeries. Both OVDs were rated as “good” to “excellent” for all attributes, with very little variation between products. Ranking the scores showed that StableVisc performed slightly better than ProVisc on all tested attributes (but were equally rated for compatibility on OVD use with an inserter). StableVisc was rated nearly excellent for the ability to maintain chamber stability and depth while inserting and manipulating the IOL within the capsular bag, visualization through the OVD, ease of removal, ease of distribution within the anterior chamber, and ease of visco dissection.
Conclusions :
In wet lab conditions, both OVDs performed essentially equivalent to one another against critical product attributes associated with cataract surgery.
This abstract was presented at the 2023 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in New Orleans, LA, April 23-27, 2023.