Objective: Analyze and identify critically the profile of patients with aphakic/pseudophakic bullous keratopathy attended at a public hospital. Methods: Retrospective analysis of 35 eyes of 35 patients with diagnosis of bullous keratopathy, which has been followed in the department of cornea and external diseases of Hospital da Piedade. The one whose pre and per operative data we did not find were excluded. This selection of patients was done from January to June of 2007. Results: As main results we found that bullous keratopathy occurred in 22.86 % (8 eyes) of cases after extracapsular phakectomy and 74.28 % (26 eyes) after phacoemulsification. Rupture of posterior capsule and vitreous loss was documented in 25.71% (9 eyes). In 94.29% (33eyes) the intraocular lenses was in posterior chamber, and two patients were aphakic. The visual acuity of all patients was worse than 20/200. The mean time from phakectomy to diagnosis of bullous keratopathy was 11.93 months (1-44 months). Conclusion: Adequate analysis of corneal endothelium is an essential condition to obtain success of cataract surgery with corneal transparency, and bullous keratopathy seems to be more related to phacoemulsification. That should be read with caution since this relation may occur because of the higher number of phacoemulsifications that are practiced in that Hospital where the study was conducted and many of them was performed by training surgeons.
Corneal diseases; Corneal transplantation; Cataract extraction; Postoperative complications
