Haptic Poor Positioning as a Cause of Astigmatic Refractive Surprise

Abstract

An unexpected refractive outcome after cataract surgery may have multiple causes, whether preoperative, operative or postoperative. The most important ones have been described as errors in the preoperative biometric calculation and also the less probable or infrequent ones such as: inadequate selection of IOL power, lack of precision in the manufacture of IOLs, surgical intervention in the wrong patient or in the wrong eye and the use of a soft contact lens at the time of the biometry test. We present the case of a patient who underwent cataract surgery by phacoemulsification with a monofocal foldable intraocular lens (IOL) implantation in the capsular bag, who 30 days after the operation presented a total or refractive astigmatism of - 1.00 diopters (D) x 110°. Sometime later, 90 days after surgery, he returned due to decreased visual acuity with a refractive astigmatism of -5.50 D x 165° which was not related to the corneal astigmatism measured by keratometry and topography (-0.94 D x 82°). The eye had clear mediums and showed no reports of immediate and gradual postoperative complications. In this case we found a mechanism of IOL tilt caused by a poorly deployed haptic at the time of IOL insertion that was not evident at the time of surgery associated with IOL displacement caused by fibrosis and pupillary contraction, which generated a late astigmatic effect. This was corroborated by ultrasound with ultrabiomicroscopy and surgical repositioning of the IOL, which allowed the case to be solved.