Clinical Analysis of Central Islands after Small Incision Lenticule Extraction (SMILE)

To evaluate the incidence of central islands after 6-month follow-up of Small Incision Lenticule Extraction (SMILE) and to assess their role in safety and accuracy.

Analysis of the preoperative and postoperative corneal tomography, best spectacle refraction and corrected distance visual acuity of 82 subjects that underwent SMILE. Incidence of central islands was assessed through total corneal spherical aberration (SA) over 4 mm of central diameter and the SA was compared between two groups with and without safety loss (CDVA difference ≥0.1 logMAR from preoperative). The cut-off value for detecting the risk of postoperative central island development was calculated. The influence in accuracy was calculated through magnitude of error of the spherical equivalent and astigmatism, both for spectacle refraction at corneal plane (SE-Rx and AST-Rx) and for total corneal refractive power at 3 mm (SE-TCRP3 and AST-TCRP3).

Five from 82 eyes resulted in a loss of safety, obtaining significant differences in SA, both preoperatively (p = .01) and postoperatively (p = .007) after stratification by safety loss. A preoperatively cut-off value ≤0.012 μm of SA predicted the appearance of central islands with sensitivity of 100% and specificity of 75%. Despite postoperative SA being related to the preoperative spherical equivalent, for both SE-Rx and SE-TCRP3, this tendency disappeared after readjusting results according to a nomogram.

Central islands in SMILE, despite being a rare adverse event, can affect the safety of the procedure and are related to preoperative central steepness, not corrected by the spherical lenticule, which is clearly visible postoperatively.