To investigate the clinical features and prevalence of patients with laser iridotomy-induced bullous keratopathy in Korea.

Using a retrospective study, the patients with laser iridotomy-induced bullous keratopathy who underwent penetrating keratoplasty were selected. We investigated the duration from iridotomy to corneal decompensation, preoperative anterior chamber depth, axial length, keratometry, and survival time of the grafted cornea. The data were compared with the data of patients with pseudophakic bullous keratopathy as controls.

Laser iridotomy-induced bullous keratopathy was found in 17 eyes, which represented 2.3% of penetrating keratoplasty cases (727) and 8.5% of bullous keratopathy cases (201), with a mean age of 66.9 years. The laser iridotomy-induced bullous keratopathy group showed a higher female ratio (15 out of 17), shorter mean axial length (22.09 ± 0.79 mm) and anterior chamber depth (1.91 ± 0.36 mm) than the control group (15 out of 50, 24.30 ± 2.54 mm and 3.27 ± 0.66 mm, respectively) with a statistical significance ( p = 0.002, p < 0.001 and p < 0.001, respectively). Mean survival time of the grafted cornea was 39.9 ± 8.6 months in the group of laser iridotomy-induced bullous keratopathy, which was shorter than the control group (47.8 ± 3.1 months) without statistical significance ( p = 0.47).

In Korea, laser iridotomy-induced bullous keratopathy shows non-negligible prevalence and should be further investigated.