Primary Retinal Detachment

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2 Prophylaxis in Fellow Eye of Primary Retinal Detachment
Table 2.2. Remaining risk of retinal detachment (RD) following “prophylactic”
treatment of fellow eyes with predisposing lesions
Author(s) Risk of RD (%)
Michaelson et al. 1972 [16] 9.1
Morax et al. 1974 [17] 8.6
Dralands et al. 1980 [18] 2.9
Meyer-Schwickerath and Fried 1980 [3] 5.0
Girard et al. 1982, 1983 [19, 20] 4.4
Haut et al. 1988 [4] 2.0–5.5
Folk et al. 1989 [21] 2.9
Table 2.3. Incidence of retinal detachment in fellow eyes of comparison
groups of patients with “dangerous” lesions without and with “prophylactic”
treatment
Author(s) Without Rx (%) With Rx (%)
Dralands et al. 1980 [18] 3.7 2.9
Girard et al. 1982, 1983 [19, 20] 0.0 4.4
Folk et al. 1989 [21] 5.1 2.9
with lattice degeneration, 79% of the tears were located in such
areas [15].
As for the third assumption, various reports have shown the
still remaining rate of detachment following “prophylactic” treatment
of fellow eyes to be from 2% to 9% [3, 4, 16–21] (Table 2.2).
It is especially helpful in this discussion to present data reported
by authors who compared two parallel groups of patients – one
being treated and one not being treated [18–21]. These are summarized
in Table 2.3.
This led Michaelson et al. [16] to say that “no notable drop in
fellow eye detachment had occurred”, and they officially discontinued
the practice of “prophylactic” treatment. Dralands et al. [18]