Simultaneous Surgery in Bilateral Congenital Cataract

Feti K Memed¹, Nanda Lessi Hafni¹

¹Cicendo Eye Hospital- Department of Ophthalmology Universitas Padjadjaran

Purpose:
Congenital or infantile cataract is a type of cataract occurring at birth or within the first 12 months of life. It causes almost 10% of children blindness. Simultaneous bilateral surgery is still controversial as endophthalmitis is still a big worry and should be prevented. Systemic problems that some patients have give a higher risk for general anesthesia (GA), therefore simultaneous bilateral cataract surgery avoids the necessity of performing (GA) twice. The high cost of surgery under GA also adds on to the disadvantage of performing it twice. The purpose of this study is to report the result of simultaneous bilateral cataract surgery in congenital cataract in Cicendo Eye Hospital.

Methods:
This is a retrospective study of 98 eyes from 49 patients who underwent bilateral simultaneous cataract surgery done by one surgeon (FK) from January 2006 until December 2007.

Results:
There were no intraoperative complications in all eyes. Postoperative complications include anterior uveitis (3%), posterior uveitis (1%), secondary glaucoma (1%), and posterior capsule opacity (PCO) (7%; 4% were 4 eyes of two same patients). There were no reports of endophthalmitis. Red reflex was present in all eyes 1 month postoperatively, 3 months, 6 months, and more than 6 months after surgery, the number of patients that did not control were 32.7%, 51%, and 73.5%, respectively, and red reflex were present in all patients.

Conclusions:
Bilateral simultaneous cataract surgery is safe as no endophthalmitis occurred postoperatively.