Canalicular lacerations in a tertiary eye hospital: our experience with monocanalicular stents

Introduction: Canalicular injury is commonly encountered in lid trauma. A multitude of techniques and stents are available to manage canalicular lacerations. Monocanalicular stents offer a simple, technically easy and cost-effective solution for managing such cases. Objective: This is a retrospective review of the patients presenting with canalicular lacerations to a tertiary eye hospital from January 2014 to September 2017. We evaluated factors like time of surgery, cause of injury, time of stent removal and their association with the surgical outcome. Additionally, we also reviewed the current data available in literature on the exclusive use of monocanalicular stents for the management of all types of canalicular injuries. Methods: Retrospective patient file review. Results: We evaluated 30 cases of canalicular injuries in 30 patients. The majority of our patients were males (24, 80%), and the mean age was 32.11±15.09 (4-59) years. The mode of injury was road traffic accidents (RTA) in 20 (66.7%), assault with sharp edged weapons in 8 (26.7%) and dog bite in 2 (6.6%) cases. The mean time of repair was 17.2±9.37 (6-36) hours after injury and the mean time of stent removal/ extrusion was 3.5±0.99 (0.5-5) months. The cases were divided based on time of repair i.e., within 24 hours (21 cases) or after 24 hours (9 cases) from the onset of injury. The extrusion rates were 14.3% (3) and 44.4% (4) respectively in the two groups. Our overall anatomical success rate was 86.7% and functional success rate of 76.7%. Conclusions: Overall failure rate was 23.3% (7 out of 30). Delay in surgery (>24 hours) and dog bites were associated with a poorer prognosis of canalicular repair using monocanalicular stents. Abbreviations: FDDT = Fluorescein dye disappearance test, SPSS = Statistical Package for Social Sciences, RTA = Road Traffic Accident.