Long-term follow-up of patients after retinal detachment surgery

The value of long-term follow-up of patients after retinal detachment surgery depends on the number of further detachments prevented. This in turn depends on the frequency with which predisposing lesions are found and treated and also the risk of leaving them untreated. In a retrospective study of 128 patients who had attended the Retina Clinic at Moorfields, High Holborn, for at least 10 years, the frequency with which asymptomatic retinal breaks were detected was less than two per hundred patients per year of follow-up. The risk of such lesions progressing to detachment if left untreated is estimated to be no more than 12 per cent and on this basis it is likely that no more than four or five detachments were prevented in our series. During the same period 66 new or re-detachments occurred, in spite of regular examination and treatment of predisposing lesions found, and it is concluded that long-term follow-up is of doubtful value in the prevention of further detachments.