biggest pupil

[lisa1234]

is there a surgery or something that will make your pupil smaller? my pupil is literally like almost the size of my eye lol. its ridiculous. it makes me look really weird.

[1234530]

I had a severe eye injury 9 weeks ago. The diagnosis is torn iris with no problem with the retina and cornea(Drs. say I am lucky?). My pupil will not undilate. It is 3/4 the size of the iris. My problem is that I am a dentist. My eye is so sensitive to light that I have to wear a ring around my eye and sunglasses when I use the computer or when I go into a room with strong fluorescent lights. I cannot work since my closeup vision is poor now in the injured eye, but I can see well when I use my magnifiers(loops for closeup work). The problem is that when I put any light into the visual field my eye reacts and prevents me from working. I am still taking predisolone eye drops and combigan. The doctors tell me that I am not patient enough. Well, that is easy for them to say since they can do their surgery. I cannot continue on this way. Do you have any suggestions? Will the sensitivity to light really stop sometime on its own, even if the pupil remains large?

Desperate for some relief,

Waiting to rejoin the workforce

[John C Hagan]

I neglected to add that exposing yourself to bright lights will not make your pupil permanetly smaller anymore than exposing yourself to long periods in the dark will not make them permanently bigger.

Remember that prolonged sun exposure (besides not being good for your skin) is not good for your eyes. Too much sun can cause cataracts, macular degeneration, wrinkles and skin cancer on the eyelids.

JCH MD

[John C Hagan]

Of course. That's how they work, get smaller in bright light to protect the retina, get bigger in the dark to let in more light.

[lisa1234]

Will staying in the sun with your eyes open make your pupils smaller?

[John C Hagan]

No there is no surgery to make your pupil smaller and still work normally. I'm an eye surgeon and after an injury with a "blown pupil" we can make it smaller but it will not react normally to light and dark. Pupils are widest and biggest in youth get smaller as we age and are very small in the very elderly.

There are drops (pilocarpine) that will make the pupil smaller but I dont' advise them because of the chance of side effects. These drops constrict the pupil but it doesn't dilate normally and the drops are often painful. Forget them.

Large pupils have long been considered a sign of great beauty. The type of drops that were used to dilate the eye long ago were called "belladonna alkaloids". "Belladonna" beautiful lady from the custom many, many years ago of women in some cultures crushing plants to extract a juice they put in their eyes to dilate the pupil.

Don't worry about both pupils being big, I have lots of patients with tiny pupils that bemoan their small size.

JCH MD