Use of a mydriatic cocktail with a wick for preoperative mydriasis in cataract surgery: a prospective randomised controlled trial

Sir,

We read with interest the study by Sengupta et al.¹ We carried out a randomised controlled single-blind study of conventional vs depot mydriatic drug delivery prior to cataract surgery in 2006, which seems to be missing from their bibliography.²

Contrary to their experience, we found that there was no significant difference between the mydriasis obtained with our depot system and that obtained using conventional drop application. However, we did agree with the conclusion that the use of a depot mydriatic delivery system appeared to be safe, and efficient in terms of both finance and time.

We would also disagree with their hypothesis that the absence of a difference between the two methods in previous studies was perhaps due to the duration of application; our pupillary measurements were taken from between 1 and 4 h after instillation and we still did not find a statistically significant difference between the two groups.