Effect of Nondominant Left-Handed Phacoemulsification Surgery on Corneal Endothelium

Purpose: To evaluate the effect of phacoemulsification surgery performed with the nondominant left hand on the corneal endothelium. Methods: The study included 160 patients who were followed up for at least six months after uneventful cataract surgery. Seventy-seven patients who underwent nondominant left-handed phacoemulsification were evaluated as Group 1 and 83 patients who underwent dominant right-handed phacoemulsification were evaluated as Group 2. In all the patients, preoperative axial length (AL), aqueous depth (AD), anterior chamber depth (ACD), and lens thickness (LT) were evaluated. All phacoemulsification procedures were undertaken with the same device by two surgeons using the same technique, and the intraoperative cumulative dissipated energy (CDE) value, effective phacoemulsification time, and total operative time were recorded. Corneal endothelial cell density (ECD), coefficient of variation (CV) percentage, hexagonal cell percentage (HCP), and central corneal thickness (CCT) measurements were evaluated by specular microscopy preoperatively and at the postoperative first and sixth months. Results: The two groups had a similar age and gender distribution and did not significantly differ in terms of the preoperative AL, AD, ACD, LT, intraoperative CDE, effective phacoemulsification time, and total operative time with similar age and gender distribution (p > 0.05 for all). The preoperative and postoperative first- and sixth-month specular microscopy measurements of ECD, CV, HCP, and CCT ​​were also similar in the groups (p > 0.05 for all). Conclusions: In this study, it was observed that nondominant left-handed phacoemulsification resulted in similar changes in endothelial cell count and morphology to those obtained from dominant-handed phacoemulsification.