Surgical embolus removal in retinal artery occlusion

I was interested to read the article by Garcia-Arumi and colleagues on “Surgical embolus removal in retinal artery occlusion”.¹ The authors claim that “Surgical removal of retinal arterial emboli seems to be an effective and safe treatment for RAO (retinal artery occlusion)”.

Briefly, the study was based on six eyes with temporal branch retinal artery occlusion (BRAO) and one with central retinal artery occlusion (CRAO). The surgery was performed in the eyes with BRAO 4, 12, 19, 22, 28, and 33 h after onset and in the eye with CRAO 29 h after visual loss. The first postoperative evaluation, 48 h after surgery, showed reperfusion of the occluded branch retinal artery in four and none in one; in the remaining eye, no evaluation was possible for 2 weeks because of vitreous haemorrhage. In the six eyes with BRAO, preoperative visual acuity was: hand motion, counting fingers, 20/400, 20/200, 20/200 and 20/25; at 48 h after surgery it was 20/200, 20/100, 20/100, 20/200, 20/100 and 20/30, respectively, and the final visual acuity was 20/50, 20/30, 20/80, 20/200, 20/25 and 20/25, respectively. In the eye with CRAO, visual acuity remained hand motion throughout.

It is worth noting, initially, that the usefulness of a conclusion …