AAO 2024: Preventing and managing complications following vitreoretinal surgery

Vaidehi S. Dedania, MD, from the New York University (NYU) Langone Health and the Grossman School of Medicine, spoke with the Eye Care Network at this year's AAO meeting held in Chicago, Illinois. She insights from the session, "Preventing and managing complications following vitreoretinal surgery."

Video Transcript:

Editor's note: The below transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Vaidehi S. Dedania, MD: Hi, I'm Vaidehi Dedania, associate professor of ophthalmology at NYU Langone Health and Grossman School of Medicine. I'm participating in a course titled, "prevention and management of complications from vitreoretinal surgery." And in this course, I'll specifically be talking about endophthalmitis, which is very important for a number of reasons.

Some of the factors that we mentioned as crucial risk factors for the development of endophthalmitis are hypotony and wound leak. And I delve into what are methods we can use to prevent these and address them when they occur. We also talk about management of this complication when it occurs. And along those lines, one of the key questions that comes up is, what do we do if a patient has a penicillin allergy? And we delve into some of the literature regarding how to manage these patients. And finally, as part of this, we also talk about what happens when patients talk about having a betadine allergy, and how do we address that before or during surgery?

Some pearls to walk away from this portion of the course include being what I call "a second look surgeon." If you look at your sclerotomies and they're not leaking, but you notice maybe a gas bubble developing under the conductiva look again and consider suturing those choroidotomies or finding another way to ensure that they stay closed. When we talk about a betadine allergy, we really think about the fact that there very few reported cases worldwide over all the years demonstrating a true allergy to betadine and in patients that really express they have this allergy, if it's an elective surgery, we really advocate for them following up with an allergist to be tested, as this is very important for future surgeries.