Surgical management of retinal detachment without cryopexy

A clinical study of eyes with rhegmatogenous retinal detachment compared the reattachment rate in two groups of eyes: in the control group, cryopexy was applied over the retinal breaks during surgery; in the test group, cryopexy was not applied. There was a similar rate of retinal reattachment in the two groups in the immediate postoperative period. However, during the long follow-up period (36 months) there was a considerable difference in the two groups. Eyes that had undergone cryopexy had a lower rate of redetachment than eyes that had not. The rate of operative and postoperative complications was low in both groups, except for periretinal proliferation, which was more frequent in the test group. These results suggest that cryopexy may lower the incidence of redetachment after retinal detachment surgery.