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Medical Forum / General / Vision / December 2006Retinal detachment surgery side effects
All, My brother recently went to an ophthalmologist as he was seeing wavy lines when looking at straight lines. He was diagnosed with retinal detachment and was advised to undergo immediate surgery. The surgery itself was claimed as being successful but he has two serious side effects. 1. He's gone extremely myopic in the eye, reducing his vision to a mere 6-7 inches. This is almost blind! 2. His eye has "shrunk" giving an impression of having lost an eye, or close to. His doctor claims that these are normal side effects and the myopia can be corrected via lenses or laser surgery. Needless to say, we are _extremely_ worried about this situation. He was a normal looking person and now he appears disfigured and is almost blind. Is this normal? What are his options now Thanks a lot, Sashi > All, > My brother recently went to an ophthalmologist as he was seeing wavy [quoted text clipped - 14 lines] > He was a normal looking person and now he appears disfigured and is > almost blind. > Is this normal? What are his options now He is not blind; as long as vision can be corrected with glasses you are not blind. The retinal detachment surgery did prevent true blindness, the kind that glasses can't correct. He likely had a band put around his eye to fix the detachment, this surgery is done for the more serious cases and does prevent true blindness but at the expense of creating myopia. His options, as his doctor said, are glasses (likely won't work well if other eye is not myopic), contact lenses or laser refractive surgery. Please do not worry about this; correcting the detachment saved his sight and myopia is a small price to pay. Dr Judy > > All, > > My brother recently went to an ophthalmologist as he was seeing wavy [quoted text clipped - 32 lines] > > Dr Judy Dr Judy, Thanks for your advise. It does make me feel better. Is myopia an expected and a common side effect? How about the shrinking of the eye socket which is a kind of disfigurement? Is this also common side effect? Thanks, Sashi > > He is not blind; as long as vision can be corrected with glasses you > > are not blind. [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > > Please do not worry about this; correcting the detachment saved his > > sight and myopia is a small price to pay. > Thanks for your advise. It does make me feel better. Is myopia an > expected and a common side effect? I had a retinal detachment and surgery to correct it in my right eye about 15 years ago. I got a buckle (the band that Dr. Judy described). It does lengthen the eyeball, causing both increased myopia, and in my case, irregular astigmatism which is not completely correctable with ordinary glasses or contacts. I was already extremely myopic (I could only see about an inch), so I just got slightly stronger contacts. Was your brother very myopic before the surgery? I had this surgery about a year ago in the left eye. The doctor elected not to put on a buckle, so I retained my 20/20 uncorrected vision in that eye. > How about the shrinking of the eye socket which is a kind of > disfigurement? Is this also common side effect? I didn't have that. It's true, though, that high myopia corrected with glasses makes the eye look much smaller. If your brother is myopic in one eye and not the other, he may wish to consider contacts. It is very difficult, and sometimes impossible, to see using glasses when the correction is very different.  SignatureDan Abel dabel@sonic.net Petaluma, California, USA > How about the shrinking of the eye socket which is a kind of > disfigurement? Is this also common side effect? That's what happens if you _don't_ treat it. See http://www.ocularists.org/shell.htm. Shrinkage of the eye (not the "socket") is called phthisis bulbi and follows a major organic problem, with scarring and traction on the inside of the eye. I'm not sure if your friend actually has phthisis, since wearing a high-minus lens makes the eye look much smaller without any real physical change. It's usually pretty painful at the same time. -MT > > How about the shrinking of the eye socket which is a kind of > > disfigurement? Is this also common side effect? [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > > -MT My brother had perfectly good vision before the surgery and is strongly myopic in the operated eye now. As everyone has pointed out it's probably best to get it corrected via laser surgery or corrective contacts. The shrinkage is apparent without wearing any lenses whatsoever so it doesn't have much to do with a corrective lens making it look apparently small. Looks like this might be an issue of phthisis bulbi, unfortunately. Sashi Sashi > My brother had perfectly good vision before the surgery and is strongly > myopic in the operated eye now. [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > apparently small. > Looks like this might be an issue of phthisis bulbi, unfortunately. In phthisis bulbi, the eye goes completely soft and blind. Is your brother blind in that eye? As has been mentioned before, the silicone "belt" the goes around the eye has the effect of putting a rubber band around a balloon -- the eye has no choice but to become elongated in the antero-posterior direction, with the result that it becomes increasingly myopic. This *may* have the visual effect of the eye looking smaller. DrG |
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