Abstract
Laser sclerectomy, a simple filtering procedure to alleviate high intraocular pressure in glaucoma patients, was thought to offer longer lasting effects than the standard trabeculectomy procedure, thereby improving the patient's outcome. Recent clinical trials have shown that this was not the case and that pharmacologic wound healing modulation is also required with this new procedure. 5-Fluorouracil (5-FU) is useful as an adjunct treatment for glaucoma filtering surgery. However, efficacy depends upon maintaining sustained drug levels, currently achieved by repeated daily injection of the drug for several weeks. To overcome this limitation, we designed a biodegradable implant for the sustained release of 5-FU. After laser sclerectomy, the implant is inserted through the same 1 mm wide conjunctival snip incision then positioned below the open channel. Implantation takes less than a minute. The implant releases the drug over 15 days and totally biodegrades in less than 100 days. The combined laser surgery and implantation procedure shows great potential for the treatment of glaucoma.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 240-244 |
Number of pages | 5 |
Journal | Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering |
Volume | 1877 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jun 24 1993 |
Event | Ophthalmic Technologies III 1993 - Los Angeles, United States Duration: Jan 17 1993 → Jan 22 1993 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
- Condensed Matter Physics
- Computer Science Applications
- Applied Mathematics
- Electrical and Electronic Engineering