Abstract

Background: Kerato-prosthesis is an artificial cornea-lens complex that combines the optical properties of the crystalline lens and the cornea. It is for now the surgical resort for severely damaged cornea and anterior segment where keratoplasty has no chance of survival. Non transparent cornea is a common cause of blindness in developing countries including Nigeria where lack of donor cornea is a problem. Apart from donor cornea problem, many of the corneal blind will not have successful corneal graft because of the nature of the corneal problem (usually vascularised) and disorganized anterior segment. Five consecutive Nigerian eyes (5 patients) with blinding corneal opacities had Worst - Singh kerato-prosthesis surgery between 1994 and 1995 to restore vision. This case review is on the outcome of the surgery 10 yrs after.
Case Report: All the patients were males with age range of 30 to 76 yrs and a mean age of 42 yrs. One eye had corneal decompensation after cataract extraction, while the other 4 eyes had scarred and vascularised cornea. All 5 eyes had light perception vision pre-operation. After a variable follow up period of 6 to 10 yrs, only one eye had hand movement vision while the other 4 eyes had no light perception vision. The major complications were development of tough vascularised retroprosthetic membrane (4 eyes) and infective endophthalmitis in an eye.
Conclusions: In conclusion thus we found that the device was unsuitable in the reported setting.

Keywords: Keratoprosthesis, retroprosthetic membrane, Cornea