Abstract

Aims: To study the outcome and safety of India ink corneal tattooing for disfigured corneal scars.

Settings and Design: This was a single-centre prospective interventional case series of patients who developed corneal scars with nil visual potential and underwent corneal tattooing from June 2017-September 2018 with a follow-up period of at least 6 months.

Materials and Methods: 15 consecutive cases were enrolled for the study. All patients desired a cosmetic treatment for their corneal scars in blind eye. Complete ophthalmic examination including B scan and photographs of the patients' eyes were obtained. Chemical corneal tattooing was performed using Indian Ink Powder. Patients underwent either inlay, on lay or mixed tattooing and were followed up at the first, third and fifth post-operative day, at 3^rd month, 6^th month and 1^st year post-operatively.

Statistical Analysis Used: Descriptive statistics will be calculated initially. For continuous variables, the mean, standard deviation statistics will be calculated and proportion statistics for categorical data.

Results: Among the 15 cases, 7 (46%) patients underwent intralamellar tattooing, 3(20%) patients had onlay tattoo and 5 (33%) patients underwent onlay with inlay tattoo. Patients who underwent onlay tattoo noted fading of tattoo at the end of 3 months. One year postoperatively, 12 cases (80%) especially the inlay tattoo cases were more satisfied compared to onlay tattoo. All patients were asymptomatic with no evidence of any major ocular complications at the end of one year.

Conclusion: Chemical corneal tattooing is a simple, safe and an efficient technique yielding acceptable cosmetic results. It does not require expensive materials and offers a viable option in comparison to more extensive and invasive reconstructive ocular surgery. Cosmetic contact lenses being unsuitable for majority of cases owing to poor tolerance due to dust exposure and cost effectiveness tattooing of corneal opacities still has a role in cosmetic improvement in cases with unsightly corneal scars. Chemical corneal tattoo by using Indian ink as an alternative proves to give almost equivalent stable, satisfactory cosmetic result with high patient satisfaction in all cases and an improved quality of life.

Keywords: Corneal Opacity; Corneal Tattooing; Inlay Tattoo; India Ink

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Citation

Citation: Pallavi Joshi., et al. “Outcome of India Ink Corneal Tattooing in Disfigured Corneal Scars”. Acta Scientific Ophthalmology 3.5 (2020): 72-76.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2020 Pallavi Joshi., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.