We thank Drs Soleimani, Tabatabaei, and Behrbouz for their correspondence and present our response herein. Firstly, the primary outcome in our study included the change in visual acuity from initial presentation to final follow-up. We compared the magnitude of improvement in vision between the 2 subgroups. We agree that a number of factors play a role in visual outcomes. Some factors, such as incision size, were not available in a retrospective review of operative reports. However, none of the intraocular lenses (IOLs) used in our study were foldable and therefore the incisions would have been large. In these surgeries intraocular tamponade was not used. The commentators make an interesting suggestion about considering cystoid macular edema and postoperative hypotony as secondary outcomes. To address the third point: we chose 6 months as the minimum duration of follow-up in our study in order to eliminate any fluctuations in vision that may occur as a result of postoperative healing and complications. In our experience, most patients stabilize by 6 months post surgery (or earlier) and at this point it is reasonable to consider their final best-corrected visual acuity. Fourth, we do not propose that the IOL itself is the cause of epiretinal membrane (ERM) formation. As ERM formation was a secondary outcome, some traditional risk factors for this disease could be compared in our retrospective review and others simply could not because of the inherent limitations of this study design. We discuss the risk factors for ERM formation and comment on this in our conclusion. Our groups were matched with regard to age and history of trauma. Surgical and postoperative complications are carefully discussed in our results section. Tamponade was not used in any cases in our study and, notably, is not a risk factor for ERM.

Finally, we would like to take this opportunity to make a correction to the abstract. The P value for the difference in ERM formation in the 2 groups should be .008, as presented in the paper, not .011, as presented in the abstract.