Cornea In Diabetic Patients Before And After Cataract Surgery

The purpose of our study is to compare the effect of phacoemulsification cataract surgery on the corneal epithelial thickness in patients with diabetic retinopathy and patients without diabetic retinopathy..

The prospective comparative study was conducted on the Eye Clinic Clinical center University of Sarajevo.

In this study, we compared two gropus of patients, who underwent phacoemuslification cataract surgery, one group of 50 patients with diabetic retinopathy and other group of 50 patients without diabetic retinopathy. We compared parameters corneal thickness and epithelium thickness in the central, paracentral, and peripheral cornea, before surgery, on the first day, first week, and one month postoperatively using optical coherence tomography. 

We noticed that in in the first-day postoperative increased central epithelial thickness in both groups (P<0.001). After one week there was a significant decrease in epithelial thickness in both groups. After one month we noticed a significant reductions of central epithelial thickness were found in the group of diabetic pateints. 

Diabetes causes changes on the ocular surface and the cornea. Phacoemulsification is considered the surgery of choice for cataract removal worldwide. Corneal endothelial changes after phacoemulsification have been described in different studies. Phacoemulsification cataract surgery in diabetic patients should be approached with caution because diabetic patients have a slower epithelial recovery. Our study showed that phacoemulsification in patients with diabetic retinopathy, have slower recovery of corneal and epithelial thickness.