Adverse effects of Avastine

Dear Doctor,

My mother has lost about 60% of her eye sight about few weeks back and doctors says that she has eye pressure. Now doctor is suusting her to go for avastin injection, now she is afraid to take it as there will be adverse effects. Is this true? And what the chance are for her to get her full sight back?

Thank you,

Kamal Dissanayake

[dukey]

There are some serious side effects of Avastin injections. Perhaps the most common is an RPE tear, which can lead to permanent visual loss. The risk of this happening is not that rare statistically so it is something to consider. Avastin is not used to treat elevated pressure in the eye as far as I am aware and so I am assuming that your mother has at least two problems, bleeding (neovascularisation) and perhaps gluacoma. The Avastin would be used to treat the bleeding.  

[Ray T Oyakawa, MD]

This is a treatment for rubeotic glaucoma (blood vessels in the drainage system).