Efficacy and Performance of Various Local Anesthesia Modalities for Cataract Surgery

Progression in phacoemulsification techniques for cataract surgery[1-4] has also led to inevitable changes in the delivery of accompanying anesthesia from general to local modalities [5-7] i.e. retrobulbar, peribulbar, Sub-Tenon and topical anesthesia. General anesthesia is preferred for complicated intracapsular cataract extraction (ICCE) surgery as this technique involves significant manipulation of the eye, and requires several corneal sutures to provide a watertight wound. Extracapsular cataract surgery [2,8-11] (ECCE) also requires a large corneal incision, but there was a trend towards local anesthesia such as retrobulbar [12-15], which allows quicker patient recovery, and thus facilitated day-case surgery.