Vision has not returned 7 months after retinal detachment surgery

[Kaymarin]

My mom had retinal detachment surgery in April. The surgery went great but by her 1 month post op visit her vision still had not returned, she can see outlines of things but not much more than that. They did a retinal scan and she had scar tissue that was preventing her from seeing. They scheduled a second surgery in July to remove the scar tissue and that surgery went great also. At her 3 month post op visit on friday her scans are normal but that her optic nerve was opaque and are sending her to a nerve specialist that she is going to see on Monday. Her vision is still the same as after the first surgery, she can only see outlines but for the last two weeks there has been a swirling light in that eye. I guess my question is what could be preventing her from seeing ? Is there anything she should try to fix this problem or is her vision just not going to get better than it is now ?

[chazas]

I had many of the same issues.  Detachment followed by surgery, which caused a macular pucker requiring another vitrectomy combined with cataract surgery. It took several months to recover enough from the second surgery so they could figure out what was going on. Ended up that I had a bad refractive error from the cataract surgery and much worse astigmatism than I started out with. They said I'd never be better than 20/200 but I persevered and am 20/20 with glasses now after PRK.  I still have a visual artifact in that eye, much like the swirl your mom describes, but it has faded slowly and is noticeable only rarely now.

I don't claim that your mom will have the same result, each case is very different. But I will encourage her (and you) to hang in there. These things take a long time to settle out, and you have to be your own advocate.

Good luck.

[Kaymarin]

It sounds like you went through almost exactly what my mom is going through. She had to get a cataract surgery as well and they wanted to correct her astigmatism when they did that surgery, unfortunately insurance wouldn't cover it so we opted not to get the astigmatism correction lens. At her next appointment I will have to ask her doctor if he thinks that correcting her astigmatism will help her at all.
Thank you so much for your response ! This will give her at least a little bit of hope, I think she has lost a lot of hope since her last appointment when her doctor told her that her vision probably won't get any better than it is now.

[JohnHaganMD]

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