It was announced Saturday on the Modern Medicine website that a trabecular micro-bypass implant of the Glaukos iStent, combined with phacoemulsification, helped to reduce postoperative IOP in a prospective study of 25 patients. The stents used were made of heparin-coated, surgical-grade titanium, and implanted through the inner wall of Schlemm’s canal.

Of the 25 patients in the study, 14 received two implants, and 11 received 3 implants. For all patients, IOP was reduced from a baseline mean of 20.5 to 13.2 mm Hg, and the mean number of anti-glaucoma medications being taken by the patients decreased from a baseline of 2.9 to 1.1. The patients in whom three stents were implanted needed fewer medications than the patients who received two stents. No serious postoperative complications were identified.

Dr. Ike M. Ahmed, of the  University of Toronto, who led the study, was quoted as stating:

“Our traditional approach is to control glaucoma with medications, and we typically reserve surgical therapies such as trabeculectomies or tube shunts until the disease has advanced to a far later stages . . . Perhaps these micro-shunts are part of a growing area of what we might term minimally invasive glaucoma surgery, and we might be able to implement these types of therapies for our patients at an earlier stage of the disease.”

Read ^[1] the full story on Modern Medicine.