Comparison between the refractive results of combined penetrating keratoplasty/transsclerally sutured posterior chamber lens implantation and the triple procedure.

Purpose: We determined how accurately we could predict the intraocular lens (IOL) power for a combined penetrating keratoplasty and transsclerally sutured posterior chamber lens implantation procedure (PK/TS-SPCL) compared with the Triple procedure (penetrating keratoplasty, extra-capsular cataract extraction, and IOL insertion).

Methods: We retrospectively evaluated the postoperative refractive results of 27 patients who had undergone PK/TS-SPCL and compared them with those of 46 patients who had undergone a Triple procedure. All patients with a final visual acuity > 20/50 who had surgery at the University of Minnesota between January 1988 and December 1993 were included in this study.

Results: The mean postoperative deviation from the predicted refractive error was 1.79 D for the Triple group and 1.81 D for the PK/TS-SPCL group (p = 0.95). Sixty-three percent of the Triple patients and 67% of the PK/TS-SPCL patients were within -2.00 D and +2.00 D of their predicted refractive error. As a group, the Triple patients had a mean postoperative keratometry reading of 44.64 compared with 45.58 for the PK/TS-SPCL patients (p = 0.12).

Conclusion: These results indicate that our accuracy in predicting the IOL implant power in PK/ TS-SPCL is quite comparable with that obtained for the Triple procedure, and our refractive results for each group are quite similar.