Bilateral spontaneous Descemet membrane detachment after uneventful immediate sequential bilateral cataract surgery

Abstract

Introduction: Immediate sequential bilateral cataract surgery (ISBCS) is a practice on the rise. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first reported case of bilateral Descemet membrane detachment (DMD) after uneventful same-day ISBCS, with emphasis on diagnosis and management. Patient and Clinical Findings: The case of a 66-year-old diabetic woman with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and obstructive sleep apnea on home oxygen who developed spontaneous bilateral DMD after uneventful ISBCS for visually significant cataracts is presented. Although spontaneous DMD after uneventful phacoemulsification has been reported before, it has not been reported after same-day ISBCS to the authors' knowledge. The success rates with air pneumatic descemetopexy are excellent, with ranges between 90% and 95%. In this case, surgical intervention with gas injection in the anterior chamber and surgical peripheral iridotomies resulted in excellent visual acuity restoration in the patient. Diagnosis, Intervention, and Outcomes: Patient underwent same-day ISBCS under local anesthesia by different surgeons in either eye. Standard phacoemulsification techniques were used, and no intraoperative complications were noted. The patient returned with bilateral counting fingers vision 4 weeks postoperatively and reported her vision never improved after her cataract extraction. Anterior segment optical coherence tomography (AS-OCT) confirmed the presence of bilateral DMDs. Because of the patient's severely impaired vision, bilateral air descemetopexies were performed with clinical resolution of the DMD and excellent restoration of vision in both eyes. Conclusions: Sufficient evidence supports that performing ISBCS using internationally agreed protocols minimizes the risk of experiencing bilateral complications to a negligible level when compared with staged surgery. However, with ISBCS being on the rise, spontaneous bilateral DMDs may also be seen increasingly in those eyes with no underlying commonly recognized risk factors for spontaneous DMD. With unilateral DMD, watch and wait is a viable option. However, in bilateral DMD cases, earlier air or gas descemetopexy may be preferable to increase the likelihood of success and reduce the patient's period of decreased vision.