Treatment of large, chronic and persistent macular hole with internal limiting membrane transposition and tuck...

Large, chronic full thickness macular holes which failed previous treatments are difficult to manage and even left untreated due to poor prognosis. A retrospective review of consecutive cases with chronic (at least 1 year) full thickness macular holes and internal limiting membrane (ILM) free flap transposition with tuck technique, after previously failed vitrectomy.

This was a retrospective and interventional study conducted in a single centre by a single surgeon. Patients with full thickness macular hole for at least 1 year and at least one previously failed vitrectomy with ILM peeling were recruited. A 25G vitrectomy with ILM free flap transposition was done without assistance of PFCL, viscoelastic or autologous blood. The free flap was manually tucked into the macular hole free space and gas fluid exchange was performed with 20% SF6 as tamponade. The patients were postured prone for 2 weeks postoperatively. Best corrected visual acuity, macular hole duration, previous surgeries, optical coherence tomography (OCT) appearance, hole size and closure rate were recorded.

8 consecutive patients were included from May 2016 to Feb 2018. Transposition surgery was performed an average of 1481 days (SD 1096) after diagnosis of macular hole and average of 1226 days (SD 1242) after first vitrectomy. Macular hole mean size was 821 μm (SD 361.3), preoperative VA was logMAR 1.038 (SD 0.19), postoperative VA was logMAR 0.69 (SD 0.19) at 3 months. There were 1.13 lines gained and a significant improvement of logMAR 0.33 (p = 0.0084) at 6 months. Hole closure was seen in 7 out of 8 eyes (87.5%). The OCT with failed closure showed ILM flap within a flat hole, however no overlying neurosensory layers was seen. The duration from diagnosis to surgery was 2349 days in this case.

Free flap ILM transposition tuck without the use of additional intraoperative tamponade is an effective technique in treating large chronic macular holes with previously failed primary macular hole surgeries.Trial registration (IRB of the Hong Kong University and Hospital Authority Hong Kong West Cluster, ref UW19-440), June 17, 2019.