Results of intraoperative 5-fluorouracil in patients undergoing trabeculectomy--pilot trial

To study the effect of 5-Fluorouracil (5-FU) in glaucoma filtration surgery, 13 eyes of 12 patients with glaucoma were subjected to trabeculectomy with intraoperative one minute exposure of 50 mg/ml 5-FU. The average age of patients was 36.42 +/- 18.78 years. Two of the patients had developed hypotony in the fellow eye following the use of Mitomycin C with trabeculectomy. The mean follow-up period was 9.54 +/- 5.17 weeks. Two patients developed a shallow anterior chamber with choroidals postoperatively which responded to conservative treatment. One patient developed an encysted bleb one month after surgery. Single one minute intraoperative exposure to 5-FU is a convenient and inexpensive method which appears to have no significant side effects. It may be a useful adjunctive treatment to optimise the results of glaucoma filtration surgery particularly in young and myopic patients. The long term effects, however, are not known.