PURPOSE To determine the characteristics of patients with conjunctival pterygia in the Botucatu region (São Paulo State). METHODS A retrospective study was conducted to evaluate the gender, occupation, complaints and lesion characteristics (primary or recurrent lesion, size, involutive or pulpous) of patients with pterygium. The data were submitted to statistical analysis. RESULTS Approxima...

PURPOSE To identify differentially expressed proteins in the pterygium compared to healthy conjunctiva using a proteomic analysis. METHODS Pterygial and healthy conjunctival tissues were obtained from 24 patients undergoing pterygium excision. Total proteins of the pterygia and healthy conjunctiva were analyzed with one-dimensional electrophoresis, and protein bands of interest were excised a...

Pterygium is a proliferative disease. Recent research has reported that stem cells are involved in the pathogenesis of various proliferative diseases, including solid tumors and diabetic proliferate vitreoretinopathy. In previous literature, we hypothesized that adult stem cells originated from bone marrow were involved in the pathogenesis of pterygium. We proved this by immunohistochemical sta...

PURPOSE To evaluate the efficacy of intralesional bevacizumab injection in decreasing size of pterygium. METHODS Seventeen patients with pterygium (14 with primary and 3 with recurrent pterygium) received intralesional injections of bevacizumab (2.5 mg/0.1 mL). Digital photographs were analyzed by image analysis software to determine the change of corneal involvement as a percentage of the to...

PURPOSE To evaluate fibroblast proliferation activity of the Tenon capsule from primary and recurrent pterygia. METHODS A randomized prospective study was performed with 43 surgical samples from 30 primary and 13 recurrent pterygia, and samples of normal Tenon capsule from the same pterygium patients. Proliferation, migration, and confluence rate, and patient age, lesion location and type (fl...

Aim: To evaluate the results of conjunctival autograft transplantation (CAT) combined with amniotic membrane (AMT) surgery in recurrent pterygium cases. Methods: This is a retrospective interventional case series involving patients admitted to our clinic pterygium. Patients' examination and postoperative findings were taken through standard slit-lamp examinations. Fourteen eyes 14 included stud...

BACKGROUND Pterygium is a proliferative disease with hyperplastic growth of corneoconjunctival fibro vascular tissue onto the cornea. Surgical therapy can be used to successfully manage pterygia; however, recurrence remains a problem. To reduce recurrence, surgical management may include autoconjunctival grafting, lamellar keratoplasty, amniotic membrane transplantation, and intraoperative anti...