28/12/2022
If someone asks me whats the best thing that happened to cataract surgery which forms ninety percent or more of vision giving surgery i will definitely say a tunnel incision. That left the eyeball intact after surgery and most of the time sutureless.Even intra operatively if the patient coughs or moves head, tunnel is a much safer incision. Postoperative rehabilitation became very fast too.
Compared to almost three decades back when we started ophthamology,iris prolapse, wound leak etc was not so uncommon that we always used to keep few sets sterile for first postop day even when there was no other surgery posted. Avoid coughing, sneezing, head bath etc were the common postop advices we used to give.Suture removal, release etc had to be done sometime even in OT when it was embedded with tension and caused lot of astigmatism.A madam used to make joke, doctor your suture is like this folding the shirt of the doctor when she came for postop rounds.
Triplanar tunnel via sclera and cornea or only cornea made the wound tight and gave the surgeon some more sound sleep.
Ps. One month postoperative patient after both eyes cataract surgery done a week apart.