Retinal 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

Dr Judy wrote:
> Sashi wrote:
> > 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
>
> 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

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

In article <(E-Mail Removed). com>,
"Sashi" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> Dr Judy wrote:

> > 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.

> 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.

--
Dan Abel
(E-Mail Removed)
Petaluma, California, USA

Mike Tyner wrote:
> "Sashi" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote
>
> > 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

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

Sashi wrote:

>
> 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.

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