Chalazia: A Scoping Review to Identify the Evidence Behind Treatments

Current treatment approaches aimed at resolving a chalazion vary greatly among practice settings and practitioners. The authors' objective is to provide a review of existing literature on treatment modalities aimed at resolving a chalazion.

The authors conducted a review of existing peer-reviewed publications that described treatment methods aimed at resolving chalazia in patients of any age. Literature searches were conducted using PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane. A 3-stage review process was conducted by 2 trained reviewers, including an initial screening, a full-text review, and data extraction. Articles were assessed for baseline study identifiers, study design, country of origin, number of patients, demographic characteristics, types and number of treatments administered, and resolution rates. Publications were graded using the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine levels of evidence table.

A total of 2814 articles were initially identified based on database queries; 39 studies met inclusion criteria for full-text review. The most represented study design was case series (15), followed by randomized controlled trials (14). Twenty-five publications discussed intralesional corticosteroid injections, 18 discussed incision or excision and curettage, 5 discussed conservative treatments, and 8 discussed topical antibiotic±steroid treatments. Both the definition of chalazion resolution and resolution rates for each treatment modality varied widely between publications.

Procedural management of chalazia, including corticosteroid injections and surgical management, is most often studied in the literature. Fewer publications exist on the efficacy of conservative and topical treatments.