Blurriness mornings after cataract surgery

[GrandKK]

I am one month post op from cataract surgery with a toric lens. I am still experiencing morning blurriness, vertical ghosting in that eye which is clearer by afternoon and much clearer by evening. I am off all drops at this point. My one week follow up appt with my OD she said all looked good and was able to refract to 20/20 with measurements of +1.00  -0.50 ×130. However the appt was in the morning and I feel a later day measurement would have been more favorable. Could I be experiencing corneal edema and how long could this persist?

[Ron_AKA]

4 weeks is a bit early to conclude that the eye is fully healed. However, if it is, then unfortunately the surgeon has missed the correct lens power and left you 1.0 D far sighted. That is going to make your near vision (without glasses on) poorer. Your astigmatism is not that high, and that is not likely a significant cause of the vision issues, and in fact is correcting your far sighted condition by about 0.25 D.

You should go back to the surgeon for an exam to see if there is something going on with the eye. If this is the first of two eyes to be done, some adjustment needs to be made to the power calculation procedure used. You don't want a miss like this to happen again. A miss to the myopia (negative) side is better than one to the plus side.

[John C Hagan III, MD, FACS, FAAO]

=

[John C Hagan III, MD, FACS, FAAO]

Your discription if very characteristic of corneal edema, either due to primary cornea disease like  Fuchs Dystrophy or a complicated, difficult surgery. For one month out this is not normal. Another possible cause is 'exposure keratitis". That means during sleep your eyelids don't completely close leaving a strip of cornea that dries out during sleep. More common if you sleep with a fan in the bedroom. In any case the surgeon owes you an explanation.