Incisional Correction of Corneal Astigmatism During Phacoemulsification

Abstract

Corneal astigmatism of more than 1 diopter has been reported in up to 45 percent of the cataract surgery candidates (Khan and Muhtaseb, 2011). Today, cataract surgery is regarded as a refractive surgery, mainly aiming emmetropia, and this makes eliminating corneal astigmatism is critical (Nordan, 1995) (Comez and Ozkurt, 2012) (Eliwa et al., 2015). Residual astigmatism of more than 0.5 D may cause visual disturbances such as blur, halos and ghosting. Several methods have been developed for correction of preexisting corneal astigmatism during phacoemulsification includes: manipulation of the phacoemulsification incision, opposite clear corneal incision (OCCI), limbal relaxing incisions (LRIs), astigmatic keratotomy, and toric Intraocular lenses implantation (Bhalla et al., 2016). It is possible to reduce pre-existing astigmatism by creating a clear corneal incision at the steep meridian of the cornea, however; creating a small incision can correct only astigmatism up to 1 Diopter, and sometimes this method may not be easy to perform due to the location of steep meridian like the difficulty while creating superonasal or inferonasal incision at the left eye. It is possible to add more relaxing effect by modifying the width (The larger the