Abstract
A cataract is the primary cause of preventable blindness and is characterized by a congenital, developmental, or acquired opacity of the human lens. Cataracts are predominantly treated through surgical procedures utilizing a combination of anesthetic agents such as proparacaine to reduce patient discomfort. Proparacaine is used to inhibit voltage-gated sodium channels on neuronal membranes to prevent signal propagation and pain signaling in the patient. Current clinical standards call for the utilization of 0.5% proparacaine when used for local anesthesia in cataract surgeries. In this review, the authors extracted the reported application site and concentrations of proparacaine in conjunction with various combination agents to accurately describe its usage in cataract surgery. It was found that most surgeons adhered to the standard concentrations of proparacaine and generally used tropicamide, an eye dilator, as a combination agent in cataract surgery. Additionally, surgeons preferred anesthetic application to the retrobulbar block. The authors find that although surgeons are following standard protocol, adjustments for lowering the standard dose of proparacaine could prove beneficial in preventing proparacaine toxicity. Furthermore, the authors find that more research can be conducted in the future examining other combination agents for use with proparacaine to improve patient outcomes.
Highlights
BackgroundWhen the lens of a patient's eye becomes hazy, it is referred to as a cataract
The goal of this study is to look at how proparacaine is currently used and applied to patients undergoing cataract surgery
Understanding how anesthetics like proparacaine are used during this treatment can assist in enhancing the existing standard of care for patients with this condition
Summary
When the lens of a patient's eye becomes hazy, it is referred to as a cataract. Cataracts are most commonly caused by the aging process. According to the data presented, 23 research papers reported that retrobulbar injections were the most common method for applying proparacaine [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32] This is likely because, in order for physicians to successfully perform the procedure and minimize harm to the patient, they need relaxation of the muscles around the eye to ensure as little movement as possible during the procedure. Whatever the situation may be, more research into cataracts and cataract surgery is needed to improve patient outcomes
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