J Korean Ophthalmol Soc.  1989 Feb;30(1):87-91.

Effect of Cryotherapy on Proliferative Vitreoretinopathy(PVR)

• Chung H
• Hwang JM

Abstract

Cryotherapy is blamed for inducing or aggravating PVR, by releasing retinal pigment epithelial(RPE) cells. These are based on the fact that PVR rarely occurs in non-operated eye, and many of PVR patients have received cryotherapy during surgery. Nontheless, in eyes with diathermy also developed PVR, and although there have been many experiments, the effect of cryotherapy on inducing PVR was not proven experimentally in the living eye. We made retinal tears in the living rabbit eyes, and applied cryotherapy on one eye of each rabbit. The result was compared histopathologically with noncryothermized control eye. There was no statistically significant difference between the two groups concerning the migration of RPE, and the proliferation of RPE. Although the formation of epiretinal membrane was more obvious in the cryothermized group, the difference was not statistically significant.

Keyword

proliferative vitreoretinopathy(PVR); cryotherapy; retinal tear; retinal pigment epithelial(RPE) cell

MeSH Terms

Cryotherapy*
Diathermy
Epiretinal Membrane
Humans
Retinal Perforations
Retinaldehyde
Retinaldehyde