The following transcript has been edited for clarity:
Hi everyone, my name is Luis Acabá-Berrocal, MD, and I just presented at ASRS on the 8-year outcomes of polytetrafluoroethylene (Gore-Tex; W.L. Gore & Associates) scleral fixated intraocular lenses (IOLs).
So, we did a retrospective, single-center study looking at patients who had Gore-Tex sutured IOLs and vitrectomy, with at least 7 years of follow up. We had a total of 55 patients, and we had some interesting findings, including that a lot of these patients had complex eyes with an average of 1.8 previous surgeries per eye, with a range of 0 to 5. We also found that these patients maintained visually significant gains that were statistically significant at 3 months, 1 year, 5 years, and even 7 years post-procedure.
We also wanted to look at the complications. We found that there weren't that many. The most common was CME in 11% of patients; all cases resolved with either topical or intravitreal steroids. Two cases had visually significant lens tilt; they required reoperations. Two cases had Gore-Tex exposure; they were fixed with a patch graft surgery. Overall, there were no cases of endophthalmitis and no cases of suture breakage.
To summarize, we found that over the long term—specifically, 8 years—there were no endophthalmitis, no suture breakage. Gore-Tex suture seems to be a safe, long-term surgery for patients. RP
