Statins linked to lower risk of complications after retinal detachment surgery | ASRS 2026

Being on statin therapy is associated with nearly halving the risk of the most common complications after surgery to repair a detached retina, according to data presented at the 2026 American Society of Retina Specialists Annual Scientific Meeting in Montreal.

Systemic statin use was associated with a 47% reduced risk of proliferative vitreoretinopathy — the leading cause of surgical failure in repairing rhegmatogenous retinal detachment, the most common type of retinal detachment — according to the results of a propensity score-matched cohort study presented by Christina Weng, M.D., MBA, a professor at Baylor College of Medicine. Weng also reported a 48% decreased risk of complex retina detachment reoperation.

Estimates vary, but several sources suggest that between 28,000 and 40,000 surgeries to repair retinal detachments are performed each year in the U.S., and that in approximately 10% of cases, proliferative vitreoretinopathy complicates repairs of spontaneous retinal detachment repairs.

Weng’s finding that statins might have a protective effect against proliferative vitreoretinopathy is not a novel one. Finnish researchers reported findings in 2018 in Acta Ophthalmologica that suggested a protective effect from statins. And in June 2026, Maria Anna Bantounou, M.B.Ch.B., M.Pharm., a research fellow at Massachusetts Eye and Ear in Boston, and her colleagues reported results from a propensity score-matched control study similar to Weng’s in the journal Ophthalmology Retina, showing that repeat retinal detachment repair occurred in 16.1% of statin users compared with 21.1% of controls, with some evidence that simvastatin was particularly protective.

In the background part of their article, Bantounou and her colleagues offer some possible explanation for why statins might fend off proliferative vitreoretinopathy. They describe proliferative vitreoretinopathy as an “aberrant wound-healing response” involving inflammatory factors, including multiple cytokines and hypoxia-inducible factor. The breakdown of the blood-retinal barrier permits an influx of cytokines and growth factors from the blood that interact with retinal and retinal pigment epithelium cells to stir up local production of cytokines and growth factors. Although statins are prescribed to lower low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, they also have well-documented anti-inflammatory and antioxidative effects, Bantounou and her colleagues noted. Simvastatin, in particular, has been identified as an inhibitor of hypoxia-inducible factor.

Weng and her colleagues conducted their study using TriNetX U.S. Collaborative Network, a database often used by health researchers that includes the electronic health records of 70 healthcare organizations. They identified adult patients who had undergone retinal detachment repair surgery over a 20-year period, from 2005 to 2025. They then looked for patients who were statin users prior to surgery and assembled a control group of patients who had similar demographic, disease and ocular risk profiles. They ended up a group of 3,784 patients who had undergone retinal detachment repair who were on statin therapy prior to surgery and a matched group of the same number of patients who weren’t taking a statin.

The overall results showed a possible protective effect from statins. Weng also shared data when the patients were grouped by the intensity of their statin therapy. The association with a lower risk of proliferative vitreoretinopathy was slightly lower in the high-intensity statin users compared with the medium-intensity users (43% vs. 37%). The reduced risk for complex reoperation was consistent across all three intensity groups (41% in the high-intensity group, 41% in the medium group, and 46% in the low group).

One limitation of the study, like all such retrospective propensity score-matched cohort studies, is that unmeasured factors might explain the risk difference that this study pins on statins. Weng and her colleagues mention that “healthy-user bias” may partly explain why statin-treated patients had better outcomes. They also commented that prospective research is needed to avoid some of the problems inherent in retrospective propensity score-matched studies.