Journal of Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology
Open Access
ISSN: 2155-9570
ISSN: 2155-9570
Ahmed Lubbad, Athanassios Giarmoukakis, Christina Skatharoudi, Nikos Astyrakakis and Charalambos S Siganos
Purpose: To retrospectively analyze data related to results of different techniques of pterygium surgery performed in the Cornea Service of the Department of Ophthalmology at the Heraklion University Hospital of Crete between the years 1998-2015.
Methods: Data from patients that completed at least 10 months of follow up were included in the study. Out of 115 eyes of 110 patients 80 eyes were operated for primary and 35 for recurrent pterygium. The surgical techniques included surgical excision with bare sclera (BSE), with and without the intraoperative 4 minute use of Mitomycin-C 0.02% (BSE+MMC), as well as surgical excision with conjunctival autograft (CAU) or amniotic membrane transplantation (AMT)
Results: During the mean follow up of 20+16.3 months, the overall recurrence rate was 9.6% (11 cases). BSE technique resulted in 16.7% recurrence (2 cases) in 12 primary pterygia, while 6 out of 68 primary pterygia (8.8%) recurred after BSE+MMC. Recurrent cases operated with BSE+MMC had 13% recurrence rate (3 out of 23), while none of the eyes that underwent CAU (9 cases) or AMT (3 cases) had another recurrence.
Conclusion: The long term results of the current study for different surgical techniques of pterygium excision are in accordance with the literature reports. Authors recommend the use of BSE+MMC for primary and quiet recurrent pterygia cases as being fairly effective, and CAU or AMT for invasive recurrent or even “angry” primary pterygia.