Anterior chamber aqueous flare in retinal detachment surgery

Purpose To investigate preoperative aqueous flare as a predictive factor for proliferative vitreoretinopathy (PVR) leading to relapse in patients with primary rhegmatogenous retinal detachment repear. Methods Preoperatively, the aqueous flare of 100 consecutive patients with unilateral rhegmatogenous retinal detachement (RD) was measured with Kowa FM‐500 laser flare‐cell meter. All patients were evaluated at 1 month and 6 months or just after recurence. Results Twenty eyes underwent redetachment secondary to PVR developpement. The mean value of flare of patients that redetached was 48.12 pc/ms versus 17.74 pc/ms for those who did well (p = 0.002). We observed that 17/20 recurrences with PVR (85%) and 24/76 that did well (31.6%) had flare greater than 15 pc/ms (p = 0.0355). Moreover in patients without preoperative clinical signs of PVR, the sensitivity of the laser cell flare to predict post operative PVR when flare reached 15 pc/ms was 100% with 77.5% specificity and 31.25% positive predictive value. Conclusions Our study shows the effectiveness of the laser flare cell meter in detecting eyes at risk of developing post operative PVR leading to recurrences. The laser flare‐cell meter is a non invasive tool that informs the surgeon on the potential severity of the detachment.