Comparative Study between The Refractive Outcome Following Phacoemulsification and Small Incision Cataract Surgery

Abstract

Background: phacoemulsification is the preferred technique for cataract surgery for most surgeons. An alternative surgical technique MSICS has been gaining popularity, because of this technique has been shown to yield comparable surgical outcomes as phacoemulsification. Objective: In our study we compared the two techniques as regard their effect on visual acuity, surgically induced astigmatism (SIA). Patients and Methods: forty patients were included in this study. Patients were divided into two groups: Group A (20 patients) underwent phacoemulsification and Group B (20 patients) underwent MSICS. Results: both groups were studied preoperatively and postoperatively regarding uncorrected visual acuity (UCVA), best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) andsurgically induced astigmatism (SIA). We found that both techniques give excellent postoperative visual results and that the SIA was 0.43±0.25 in phacoemulsification group and 0.61 ±0.55 in MSICS group at 3 month postoperative with no statistical difference between both groups (p=0.348) . Conclusion: according to our study, it is recommended for all surgeons to master MSICS technique for its excellent results which are comparable to phacoemulsification. For the beginners it could be considered like a step to phacoemulsification due to many common steps between the two techniques, also for expert surgeons it could be useful and can replace phacoemulsification efficiently in very hard nuclei and could be done if conversion is decided during phacoemulsification surgery.