Optometry Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Optometry, including details on myopia, optometric practice, therapy.

The long-term effect of experimental beta-radiation therapy on the human cornea.

McMahon JM

Illinois College of Optometry, 3241 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60616, United States.

BACKGROUND: Radiation treatment of the human eye has been utilized in the United States since the early 1900s. Beta-radiation therapy was generally accepted by the medical community as a treatment option for a wide variety of anterior and posterior segment conditions from 1930 to the early 1950s. By the 1960s, beta-radiation therapy had fallen out of favor due to dangerous side effects; however an updated radiation procedure is now in use in ophthalmology to treat anterior and posterior segment disease. CASE REPORT: A 64-year-old Caucasian female presented for a routine eye examination with a history of experimental beta-radiation treatments to the eyes as a teenager. A high astigmatic refractive error was present and best corrected visual acuity was 20/40 OD, 20/30 OS. Slit lamp examination showed severe disruption throughout the lower third of both corneas, appearing densely calcified with inferior vascularization. The left eye had a central descemetocele. The patient's ocular and visual conditions were relatively stable and required no special treatment as of the writing of this report, decades after her original treatments. CONCLUSION: This patient is one example of the long-term effect of beta-radiation treatment on the eye. Ongoing care is needed to monitor the ocular health and vision of these individuals as radiation effects may necessitate observation and/or care throughout the patient's lifetime. Follow-up on more patients who underwent beta-radiation treatment decades ago, should it be possible to do so, would provide further insight into the long-term anterior segment changes that can occur as a result of such treatment.

Published 28 August 2007 in Cont Lens Anterior Eye, 30(4): 249-53.
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