Purpose:

To evaluate the prevalence of macular abnormalities not suspected by the biomicroscopy examination and identified only by macular optical coherence tomography (OCT) in the preoperative evaluation for cataract surgery.

Methods:

We retrospectively analyzed 1060 eyes of 665 patients submitted to cataract surgery between August 2014 and July 2016. The total number of patients was divided in the following groups: 0) Patients without previous diagnosis of macular disease or suspicion in the slit lamp exam and normal OCT; 1) Patients with a previous diagnosis of macular disease; 2) Patients without a previous diagnosis of macular abnormalities, but with suspicion on the biomicroscopy exam; 3) Patients without diagnosis of macular alteration and without suspicion in the slit lamp exam, but with an abnormal OCT.

Results:

Of the total eyes included in the study, 38 (3.8%) had already a previous diagnosis of macular disease. At fundoscopy, macular alteration was suspected in 70 (6.6%) eyes, of which 20 (28.6%) were confirmed by the OCT. In 952 (89,8%) eyes in which there was no suspicion of macular alteration in the biomicroscopy exam, macular OCT identified abnormalities in 47 (4.9%) eyes [31 (66.0%) epiretinal membrane, 7 (14.9%) age-related macular disease, 4 (8.5%) lamellar hole, 4 (8.5%) intraretinalcysts and 1 (2.1%) macular hole].

Conclusions:

Macular OCT was able to identify macular abnormalities in 4.9% of the eyes of patients performing the preoperative cataract surgery in which there was no suspicion on the biomicroscopy examination.