Vijay Pai1, Sucharita Das2, Jayaram Shetty3
BACKGROUND
The aim of the study is to study the effects of corneal graft size on therapeutic penetrating keratoplasty (PKP) for fungal keratitis.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Retrospective study included 20 eyes belonging to 20 patients with fungal keratitis who underwent PKP over a period of 2 years. Age of the patients ranged from 45 to 68 years with a median of 56.5 years. All patients underwent therapeutic penetrating keratoplasty with 16 or 24 interrupted 10-0 nylon sutures with graft size being ≤9 mm in 12 cases and >9 mm in 8 cases.
RESULTS
2 (16.7%) of the group receiving ≤9 mm graft developed secondary glaucoma or graft infiltrate postoperatively, but a higher number of patients (5 of 8 or 62.5%) receiving >9 mm size graft had these complications, but the difference lost significance marginally (p= 0.06233). There was highly significant difference in graft failure rate between the group receiving ≤9 mm graft (none) and the group receiving >9 mm graft (8 of 8, p=0.00001). There was no significant difference between the two groups when wound leak was taken into consideration (p=0.14737).
CONCLUSION
Early intervention in the form of keratoplasty may yield better results where graft size is much smaller, therefore decreasing the rate of complication with better chances of graft survival.
