Recurrence Rate and Clinical Outcome of Amniotic Membrane Transplantation Combined with Mitomycin C in Pterygium Surgery: Two-Year Follow-Up

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the recurrence rate and outcome of pterygium surgery with amniotic membrane transplantation (AMT) and intraoperative mitomycin C (MMC). METHODS: This prospective clinical study included patients with pterygium who were candidates for pterygium excision. After the surgical excision, intraoperative local MMC were applied in the standard protocol followed by AMT. The outcome measures were recurrence and the size change of lesion. Kaplan-Meier estimation and regression analyses were performed. FINDINGS: Fifty five eyes of 55 consecutive patients including 30 male (54.5%) and 25 female (45.5%) with mean age of 47.12 ± 15.95 years were operated. The mean follow-up period was 15.21 ± 2.67 months. The overall recurrence rate was 34.5% (19/55 cases). The estimated recurrence time for larger size of pterygium before surgery was short and marginally significant (17.14 ± 0.58 month in size of ≤3.0 mm versus. 18.56 ± 0.60 month in size of <3 mm; P= 0.06). A statistically significant association was found in reduced model among the size change of the pterygium and standardized coefficient was −0.012 (P = 0.044) and −0.743 (P < 0.001) for age and size of lesion before surgery, respectively. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that increasing age and pterygial tissue are the risk factors for recurrence and pterygium has a substantial recurrence rate even after AMT combined with MMC.