Syed Imtiaz Ali, Hafeez ur Rehman.
Role of B-Scan in Preoperative Detection of Posterior Segment Pathologies in Cataract Patients.
Pak J Ophthalmol Jan ;13(4):108-12.

Purpose: In patients with cataractous opacification of the lens, of the intensity that does not allow the examiner to peep into the posterior segment the latter is kept in the dark about the possibility of various pathologies. If the surgeon knows about these pathologies preoperatively, he can modify his plan of surgery and can also take measures to combat various predictable complications. We studied the role of B-mode of ultrasonography in detection of such complications in cataract patients. Methods: We performed B-Scan on all the patients who were admitted for cataract extraction. The period of this study was from December 1993 to May 1995 (18 months) and a total of 900 patients are included. Conclusion: We found that 818 eyes were considered as cases of simple cataract but ultrasonography revealed that 90 of them (11%) also had some other ultrasonically detectable pathology as well. In traumatic cataract we do think of the posterior segment pathologies in addition to cataract but a figure of 65.85% (54/82) positive findings is quite large. So, if we routinely do ultrasonographic examination of cataract patients preoperatively it will help us in the diagnosis of additional posterior segment pathologies.

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