RD surgery on already poor eye?

Hi,

Last night I suffered a retinal detachment on my left eye. This eye already had very poor eyesight as I was born with a congenital cataract - for which I had surgery when I was six years old. I'm now 30 years old but have only ever seen blurred shapes and colors through that eye. I have never seen any detail through it. The peripheral vision functioned OK and that was about the main benefit of the eye. On the downside I did have some light sensitivity in the eye, but I could cope with that. I definitely saw enough through the eye to be able to see objects and walk around.

My other, "good eye", is short sighted (-6.25, with a slight astigmatism) but functions well with corrective lenses.

At the moment the detachment is moving across my "bad eye", and only the left-hand third of the visual field has vision now. This has decreased from 4/5 last night.

So the question for me is: do I have surgery on my detached retina? Are the benefits worth the downsides of the surgery and the recovery, and the potential side-effects?

Any advice or suggestions (reading material etc.) would be appreciated.

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

Only a eye surgeon ophthalmologist that has looked in your eye can handicap the odds for you. Seek ye there.

JCH MD

[johnasdfg]

On your advice I went to see a private retinal ophthalmologist. He was quite reassuring - the conclusion was the I will be getting the surgery.

One area of concern though is that I also got my letter through confirming the date of surgery. It is in five weeks.

Is this too far away? Will it affect the odds of success?

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

If it would affect the success good medical practice would be to do it sooner. Why don't you ask them?

JCH MD