Living with open-angle glaucoma means managing eye pressure to protect your vision. Doctors sometimes combine two procedures: ab-interno canaloplasty (ABiC) and phacoemulsification, which is a common way to treat cataracts. Some people wonder if adding the cataract treatment provides extra protection against glaucoma.
A review of data from 663 eyes shows that combining these two procedures does not offer more benefits than doing the canaloplasty alone. At every checkup point up to three years, both methods lowered eye pressure and reduced the need for medication in the same way. While one specific group of studies showed a tiny difference in favor of the combined approach, it was not large enough to be considered significant.
Because there is a moderate risk of bias in the data used for this review, these results should be viewed with some caution. For now, adding cataract surgery to the canaloplasty procedure does not appear to provide extra benefits for managing glaucoma pressure or reducing medication use.
