Bacterial Endophthalmitis Following Sutureless Cataract Surgery

We read with interest the article by Miller and Glasgow¹in the March 1993 issue of theArchives. We found the title of the article to be misleading and inappropriate since the authors clearly describe multiple causes of endophthalmitis by other than the sutureless wound. The title lends itself to serious misinterpretation because of the possibility of invoking the post hoc ergo prompter hoc (if after this then because of this) fallacy. It would have been more reasonable to title the article "Bacterial Endophthalmitis Following Phacoemulsification" since the authors viewed a more likely cause of the infection to be the large number of times that instruments were introduced into the anterior chamber during the phacoemulsification procedure. As the authors stated, a reported endophthalmitis rate of about seven in 10 000 would result in more than 700 cases of endophthalmitis out of the more than 1 million cataract procedures performed