[Comparison of various capsulectomy techniques in cataract surgery. An experimental study]

Radial tears at the edge of an anterior capsulectomy are often associated with the occurrence of intraocular lens (IOL) loops coming out of the capsular bag with subsequent IOL decentration. We analyzed the incidence of radial tear formation in 40 human eyes obtained postmortem. These eyes were randomly assigned to four groups: "can opener," linear capsulotomy, capsulopuncture ("postage stamp"), and continuous curvilinear capsulorhexis (CCC). The CCC appeared to be much less likely to be associated with anterior capsular radial tears as opposed to the other three techniques. With the nucleus expression technique used in this study, radial tears occurred in all cases of "can opener," linear capsulotomy and capsulopuncture, whereas no tears occurred with the CCC technique. The results of this study show that CCC is currently the best available anterior capsulectomy procedure for minimizing the incidence of radial tears and sequelae such as decentration.