A Comparison of Surgical Outcomes of Two Combination Surgeries for Involutional Entropion: Fixing 3 vs 2 Pathologic Components

The purpose of this study was to compare the surgical outcomes of two combinational surgeries for involutional entropion: Inferior retractor tightening (IRT) + lateral tarsal strip (LTS) + skin muscle excision (SME) vs LTS + SME. The authors reviewed the records of 2 groups which were made up of 80 (85 eyelids) and 58 (63 eyelids) involutional entropion patients with 71.4 and 71.8 years on average respectively. The 2 groups were categorized into Group A and Group B by different surgical techniques. The former underwent IRT + LTS + SME surgery between April 2004 and February 2014, while the latter received LTS + SME surgery between March 2014 and February 2018. The authors evaluated the surgical outcomes of 2 combinational surgeries. In Group A, 84 out of 85 (98.8%) lids were successfully corrected and 1 (1.2%) lower eyelid suffered from recurrence during the follow-up period of 26.5 ± 4.6 months. Two canthal deformity cases occurred in this group. In Group B, 62 out of 63 (98.2%) lids were successfully treated and there was 1 (1.8%) case of recurrence during the follow-up period of 21.0 ± 10.0 months. No cases of complications were noted. IRT + LTS + SME procedure took 26.4 ± 2.4 minutes and LTS + SME procedure took 20.6 ± 3.9 minutes (P < 0.001). The LTS + SME technique exhibited a comparable success rate with the IRT + LTS + SME operation. LTS + SME appeared to be significantly faster and safer compared to the IRT + LTS + SME procedure.