[Indentation of large retinal tears (author's transl)]

According to us large retinal tears are between 20 degrees and 70 degrees in their largest dimension, which excludes true giant tears. Study of the data collected on 42 patients has shown us the following facts:--these retinal tears occur in phakic and often highly myopic eyes;--our global success rate is 73,8%;--tears smaller than 2 to 3 papillary diameters radially are on the whole easy to indent and failures are quite often related to a surgical fault;--tears wider than 3 papillary diameters radially are on the whole difficult to indent and failures are not always related to an obvious surgical fault, fishmouth phenomenon plays an important role;--in every case presence of blood in the vitreous seems to be unfavourable to the prognosis;--use of episcleral pockets solves must of times surgical problems related to fishmouth or tear dimension;--post operative intern limiting membrane retraction is frequent (10% vs 5,7% for all the retinal tears and detachments cured in the same period of time).