[Retinal detachment recurrences. 1. Frequency and risk factors (author's transl)]

Retinal detachment recurrence is defined the reappearance of a detachment after an initial complete success, whatever the delay between surgery and recurrence. This eliminates immediate failures due to inadequate buckles or major complications during surgery, exsudative retinal detachments that reattach spontaneously within a few days and cases where it is not sure that the retina had been completely reattached initially (cloudy media). Employing these criteria, a retrospective study demonstrated 130 eyes with recurrences out of a total of 1237 eyes operated between 1-10-69 and 31-12-79 (10,5 per cent rate); recurrences occurred in this series between 3 days and 7 years after initial surgery, 53,5 per cent of them within an interval of less than 3 months. The most important recurrence risk factors appear to be: detachment due to a retinal tear and not a hole, bullous detachment, abnormal vitreous but not full blown, massive vitreo-retinal retraction and massive intraocular bleeding during subretinal fluid drainage.