Assessing the outcome of inner limiting membrane peeling in treating idiopathic epiretinal membrane

Idiopathic Epiretinal membrane is a proliferation of contractile cells on the surface of the retina that typically occurs after posterior vitreous detachment. Though many questions have been raised on the causes of this condition, a greater debate has been on the treatment of this pathology. The literature suggest the potential benefit in peeling ILM, due to its inherent proliferative characteristics, along with the ERM, during the surgery, however sufficient data has yet to been found. Due to the lack of consensus in treatment of iERM, this study set forth to provide some insight on the surgical outcomes of patients that undergo combined peeling as well attempting to contribute to a potential surgical protocol in treating iERM. This was a retrospective case series study looking at 140 eyes from 126 iERM patients that underwent ERM surgical treatment at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center between 1998 and 2015. Pre- and post- operative visual acuities, lens status (phakic, aphakic, pseudophakic), type (kenalog with or without ICG) and duration (0.5min, 1 min, 1.5 min) of the stains used in the procedure, and any prior or successive surgeries were recorded and analyzed. Overall, ERM surgeries demonstrated a significant (p<0.0001) improvement in visual acuity. Furthermore, the combined peel patients demonstrated a significantly (p