Article Text

Download PDFPDF
Lacrimal scintigraphy. II. Its role in the diagnosis of epiphora.
  1. L A Amanat,
  2. T E Hilditch and
  3. C S Kwok

    Abstract

    Lacrimal scintigraphy (LS) was performed in 860 lacrimal drainage systems (LDS) in 188 patients with bilateral epiphora and 226 patients with unilateral epiphora. A very high incidence of canalicular obstruction was found in these patients, the incidence being higher in the group with unilateral epiphora. It is suggested that a canalicular block is a commoner cause of obstructive epiphora than has been recognised previously and that LS is a reliable method of studying the canalicular function. A significant number (42%) of the opposite asymptomatic eyes of patients with unilateral epiphora were found to have an abnormality in the LDS, which supports the view that abnormalities in the LDS tend to be bilateral. Only 25% of these asymptomatic systems showed a normal drainage, confirming that physiological obstruction can exist below the lacrimal sac in normal lacrimal drainage systems.

    Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.