Aspiration of viscous plug in macular hole surgery: a case series

Abstract

Macular hole surgery has been revolutionized since the 1990s’ with the advent of pars plana vitrectomy with internal limiting membrane peeling and gas tamponade, which is now extensively practiced and regarded as the gold standard procedure for surgical treatment of macular hole. Here, we report a simple adjunctive maneuver to conventional PPV with ILM peel and gas tamponade. We observed presence of a viscous fluid in the base of the macular hole in our series. In all, 40 eyes of 39 patients consecutively operated on from June 2019 to December 2020 for PPV with ILM peel and gas tamponade, were included in this study. The viscous plug was aspirated passively using a 25 gauge cannula with its tip above the macular hole, approaching only until a fluid-wave was visualized, which resulted in flattening of the fluid cuff area aiding the macular hole closure in a concentric pattern. Macular hole closure and complete success was seen in 39 out of 40 eyes (97.5%) and only 1 failure (2.5%) observed in this series. In our case series, we have observed the presence of a viscous fluid plug in the macular hole. We demonstrated that aspirating this thick fluid from the hole results in the flattening of the cuff of fluid and subsequent closure of the macular hole in a concentric manner in almost all cases in our series. The lack of concurrent control group means we cannot state a definitive effect of the intervention, but it does suggest the utility of a prospective randomized controlled trial.