Changes in corneal endothelial density following scleral buckling surgery for rhegmatogenous retinal detachment: a retrospective cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: To investigate the effect of scleral buckling (SB) on the morphology and density of human corneal endothelial cells (HCEC). METHODS: In this retrospective cross-sectional study, 26 patients who had undergone SB due to rhegmatogenous retinal detachment were enrolled, in which 15 patients received encircling while the other 11 segment types of SB. The postoperative status of affected eye, preoperative status of affected eye, and the contralateral healthy eye was served as the study, control and contralateral groups. The images of the corneal endothelium was obtained by specular microscopy at least three months postoperatively and analyzed. RESULTS: Postoperative best-corrected visual acuity of the study group was worse than that of another two groups (P < 0.001) while intraocular pressure and biometry data were similar. The mean cell area and standard deviation were larger in the study group while the coefficient of variation revealed no difference. The study group manifested a lower endothelial cell density than that of the control and the contralateral (P < 0.001) groups. Concerning the percentage of hexagonal cells, the study group showed a lower hexagonality than the control group (P = 0.04). No difference of the endothelial morphology was found between the segmental subgroup and the encircling subgroup, nor was a significant difference about endothelial cell loss found in the study group with different measurement interval. CONCLUSIONS: Scleral buckling leads to short-term decreased endothelial cell density and hexagonality, while the rest of morphological features remain unchanged. Moreover, both the segmental and encircling SB procedures yield similar postoperative HCEC status.