Practice of postoperative face-down positioning and its duration after silicone oil tamponade in vitreoretinal surgery: Results of a survey

Abstract

Abstract PURPOSE: This survey was conducted among practicing vitreoretinal (VR) surgeons to determine their practice of postoperative face-down positioning (FDP) of patients and its duration after silicone oil (SO) tamponade. METHODS: A web-based SurveyMonkey platform (San Mateo, CA, USA) was used for this cross-sectional study. Up to 80 practicing VR surgeons in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and Pakistan were contacted via SurveyMonkey link using WhatsApp and emails. RESULTS: Of the 80 practicing VR surgeons, 71 responded to the survey. All VR surgeons in both countries use SO in their surgical practice. While operating on complicated retinal detachments (RDs) that include cases with advanced proliferative vitreoretinopathy, 75% of VR surgeons choose SO tamponade, while 9% of VR surgeons prefer gas tamponade. Up to 63% of VR surgeons advise FDP to their patients whenever they use SO as tamponade. When operating on complicated RDs with SO tamponade, 79% of VR surgeons advise postoperative FDP. Roughly half of the VR surgeons advise FDP for 6 to 10 days. The duration of postoperative FDP varies from 1 day to 21 days. CONCLUSION: All VR surgeons use SO in their practice in KSA and Pakistan. While the vast majority of VR surgeons in both countries use SO as tamponade for complicated RDs, the practice of postoperative FDP and its duration appears to be quite variable. This highlights a lack of uniformity in postoperative care of these patients.