LETTER
Reappraisal of Spontaneous Closure Rate of Idiopathic Full-Thickness Macular Holes
Atsushi Sugiyama, Mitsuhiro Imasawa*, Tatsuya Chiba , Hiroyuki Iijima
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2012Volume: 6
First Page: 73
Last Page: 74
Publisher ID: TOOPHTJ-6-73
DOI: 10.2174/1874364101206010073
Article History:
Received Date: 20/10/2011Revision Received Date: 1/8/2012
Acceptance Date: 1/8/2012
Electronic publication date: 10/8/2012
Collection year: 2012

open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
We retrospectively reviewed the records of 142 eyes of 138 patients with idiopathic full-thickness macular hole. Spontaneous closure of idiopathic full-thickness macular hole was observed in five eyes (3.5%) of four patients before the planned vitrectomy. In the era when surgical treatment was not available for macular hole, the rate of spontaneous closure of idiopathic full-thickness macular hole was reported as 6.2%. Among several case reports on spontaneous closure of idiopathic full-thickness macular hole based on the optical coherence tomography images only one study reported the rate of spontaneous closure as 2.7%. According to the previous reports and our results, small idiopathic full-thickness macular holes may close spontaneously in a few percent of all macular hole cases. The rate of spontaneous closure may be affected by the waiting time before vitrectomy.