Treatment of vascular tufts at the pupillary margin before cataract surgery
- Cornea, Cataract and Refractive Service and the Retinal Vascular Center, Wilmer Eye Institute, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA
- Correspondence to: Walter J Stark, MD, Corneal and Cataract Services, Wilmer Eye Institute, 327 Maumenee Building, 600 N. Wolfe Street, Baltimore, MD 21287-9238, USA; wstark{at}jhmi.edu
- Accepted 19 November 2002
Iris vascular tufts or microhaemangiomas are an infrequent finding on ophthalmic evaluation. Previous reports have attributed vascular tufts at the papillary margin of the iris to diabetes, myotonic dystrophy,1 in association with Sturge-Weber syndrome,2 or in association with haemangioma of the orbit or eyelid. We describe a patient with multiple cutaneous and iris margin haemangiomas who had a history of recurrent hyphaema and underwent successful argon laser treatment of pupillary margin haemangiomas before extracapsular cataract extraction with intraocular lens implantation.
Case report
The patient is a 75 year old man first seen 2 years earlier by the retinovascular service at the Wilmer Eye Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA, for recurrent hyphaema in the left eye. He was noted to have multiple haemangiomas on the pupillary border of both eyes as well as numerous cutaneous haemangiomas on his trunk. A small hyphaema was appreciated inferiorly in the left eye with no active bleeding. Gonioscopic examination was normal except for blood in the inferior angle and the intraocular pressure was 16 mm Hg in each eye. There was no corneal endothelial blood staining. He was treated with homatropine hydrobromide ophthalmic solution 5% (Ciba Vision, Duluth, GA, USA) twice a day and prednisolone acetate 1% (Falcon Pharmaceuticals, Fort Worth, TX, USA) four …
