Contributing factors affecting postoperative astigmatism in five year follow up cataract patients

The purpose: of this study is how much further astigmatism would shift during five years after cataract surgery. And what are contributring factors affecting the long term corneal astigmatism change? Method. We retrospectively evaluated several variables such as incisional length, age, diabetes, preoperative astigmatism, postoperative immediate induced astigmatism, suture methods and complications during surgery. We divided patients into two groups : sixty-eight patients of phacoemulsification and seventy-three patients of extracapsular cataract extraction. We measured the corneal astigmatism based on keratometry at the postoperative one day, one month, 3 months, 6 months, one year, two and five years. Data: showed 2.82 diopter (D) of with-the-rule (WTR) in phacoemulsifi-cation group and 3.82 D of WTR in conventional group at postoperative one day. Which declined to 0.5 D of WTR and 1.4 D of WTR at postoperative 3 months respectively. At post-operative one year, both group showed -0.69 D of aganist-the-rule (ATR), -1.5 D of ATR respectively. Thereafter the changes of astigmatism weren't large enough to have a significant statistically in both group respectively. Old age group and diabetic patients had progressively a tendency to develop ATR shift in longterm follow up. Patients who had more WTR astigmatism preoperatively appeared to develop less ATR changes in the longterm follow up. conculslon. We suggest that aganist shift continues to one or two years. Surgeon should particularily to try to prevent the aganist shift in old age group, diabetic patients and preoperative ATR patients.