Phototherapeutic keratectomy (PTK) for treatment of recurrent corneal erosion: Correlation between etiology and prognosis - prospective longitudinal study.

Background: To evaluate and compare the efficacy of phototherapeutic keratectomy (PTK) for recurrent corneal erosion (RCE) caused by trauma, map-dot-fingerprint dystrophy (MDF) or instances without an established cause.
Methods: Single center prospective longitudinal study. Between January 2003 and November 2006 we treated 89 eyes of 82 patients with PTK. All patients presented with refractory RCE caused either by trauma, MDF or with no established cause. During follow-up (until May 2013), patients, treating ophthalmologists and/or family doctors were interviewed about the patients' state of health, recurrence of pain, the necessity of further treatments or the occurrence of complications. Five patients died or were lost during follow-up and were thus excluded from the analysis. Freedom of recurrence was estimated using logistic regression analysis using indicator variates for the following three etiologic groups: trauma (55 eyes), MDF (29 eyes) and idiopathic (no established cause; 5 eyes).
Results: Overall 89 eyes of 82 patients were followed-up. Average follow-up among failures and non-failures was 51.56 months (standard deviation (SD) 21.22, range 24 to 91) and 95.25 months (SD 15.99, range 35 to 137 months), respectively. Fifty-seven percent were female and the average age at first PTK was 45.3 years (range: 23 to 70 years). During follow-up, there were 25 recurrences and 15 of these patients received a re-PTK. Compared to patients with a traumatic cause of epithelial erosions, the likelihood of experiencing a recurrence was higher in patients with MDF [odds ratio (OR) 5.48; 95 % confidence interval (CI) 1.93 to 15.59; p = 0.001]; the OR was 8.81 (95 % CI 1.27 to 61.32; p = 0.028) for patients with an idiopathic cause.
Conclusions: In view of the available evidence, we want to raise the awareness of those managing patients with MDF and idiopathic causes that, in order to control the disease, recurrent PTK treatments are expected to be necessary more often than in cases of traumatic RCE.