Comparison of face-down and seated position after idiopathic macular hole surgery: a randomized clinical trial.

Purpose: To compare two therapeutic modalities on anatomic and functional results after idiopathic macular hole (MH) surgery: seated vs face-down position.

Design: Multicenter, prospective, randomized trial.

Setting: University Hospital Dijon and University Hospital Nancy.

Patients: One hundred and forty-four patients (150 eyes) were enrolled and randomly separated into two groups for postoperative position: for the 72 eyes in the P0 group and the 78 eyes in the P1 group, the patients were asked to keep the seated (P0 group) and the face-down position (P1 group) after the idiopathic MH surgery.

Intervention: All patients underwent a complete vitrectomy with a fluid-air exchange and an intraocular gas tamponade. After the surgery, patients were asked to keep one of the two randomly chosen positions for five days.

Main Outcome Measures: Best-corrected visual acuity (VA), fundus examination, and macular optical coherence tomography were performed before and six months after surgery.

Results: The overall anatomic success rate was 92.7%. The idiopathic MH sealed in 63 of 72 P0 eyes (87.5%) and 76 of 78 P1 eyes (97.4%) (P = .027). The mean VA increased from 0.86 to 0.61 logMAR (0.88 to 0.61 in P0 and 0.84 to 0.60 in P1). However, in a post hoc analysis based on the size of the idiopathic MH, the success rate in idiopathic MHs smaller than 400 microm was not influenced by the postoperative position (P = .47).

Conclusions: A face-down postoperative position is highly recommended in holes larger than 400 microm. The size of the idiopathic MH seems to be an important factor affecting outcome.