Abstract

Aim: To evaluate the results of phacoemulsification (PE) surgery in completely monocular cases and to emphasize the important points in the pre-, intra- and post-operative periods.
Material and Methods: A total of 42 patients who had no light perception in one eye and had underwent PE surgery in the other eye at our clinic between January 2014 and March 2016 were included in the study. The charts of the patients were evaluated retrospectively. The age and gender of the cases, whether there was an additional pathology in the eye undergoing surgery, the reason of visual loss in the other eye, the type of anesthesia used, pre- and post-operative best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) with the Snellen chart, intraocular pressure and intra- and post-operative complications were investigated.
Results: There were17 (40.5%) female and 25 (59.5%) male patients with a mean age of 74.2±10.5 (45-93) years. The most common causes of the monocular state were glaucoma, cataract and trauma, the most common accompanying pathologies in the eyes undergoing cataract surgery were glaucoma, zonular weakness and age-related macular degeneration. Mean BCVA was 0.07±0.1 (0.01-0.4) pre-operatively and 0.5±0.3 (0.01-1) post-operatively (p≤0.001). The mean follow-up duration was 3.9±5.6 months (1 week to 24 months). The most common post-operative complication was corneal edema.
Conclusion: The stress created by cataract surgery on the physician and patient is quite high in monocular cases. However, satisfactory results with PE are obtained in these cases by carefully using pre-, intra- and post-operative methods.

Key words: Phacoemulsification; Cataract surgery; Monocular.