My Retina Blog: Eight Months Out from my Retina Surgery

I'm writing this blog to try to help fellow retinal disease patients who are undergoing retinal detachment and repair surgery to gain from my own experience some idea of what one patient experienced as his recovery progressed.  I am not a medical professional and this blog is not intended to serve as medical advice or as a substitute for appropriate counsel from a doctor or other licensed professional. I am just one patient and my experiences may not be typical or representative of what other patients can expect.  I advise you to consult a licensed and trained medical doctor for medical advice


I'm now almost eight months out from my retina reattachment surgery last December.  I'm happy to say that my vision is much improved.

As I mentioned in my last post, I was referred to an ophthalmologist for the YAG laser procedure to clear the PCO, a cloudy capsule membrane behind the lens.  Before the YAG procedure, my vision in my right eye, the surgery eye, was slowly getting increasingly cloudy.  

I had the YAG laser procedure in late June, a bit more than six months after my retina reattachment surgery.  It was a very quick, painless procedure.  The doctor just had me look into the ophthalmic microscope, similar to the scope that I'm used to seeing in every ophthalmologist's office.  He had me hold on to two hand grips and my head was strapped into place so that I wouldn't move during the procedure.  The doctor also applied a lens to the surface of my eye because of some special characteristics of my particular capsule.  Again, there was no pain or discomfort.  With a few clicks of the laser in a five minute span of time, the doctor cut away the cloudy capsule membrane, and I was done.

It took a few hours for my vision to clear because the doctor had used some kind of gel compound along with the contact lens to assist with the laser procedure.  But when the gunk washed itself out of my eye, my vision in my surgery eye improved quite a bit.  At this point I made an appointment with my optometrist and he ordered a new eyeglass prescription.

I'm quite happy with the outcome.  My vision in my surgery (right) eye is about 20/20 for distance reading.  Because of the cataract in my left eye, my vision in that eye is not as good, only about 20/40.  But with the combination of the two eyes, my overall vision is pretty good.

The interesting thing is that I'm now coming to understand that despite my corrected 20/20 vision in my surgery eye, I've lost quite a bit of peripheral vision in that eye.  Even after the YAG laser procedure, I still have what I perceive as cloudy vision of the world in my right eye.  I can read signs very well, but the world in general is foggy and not as detailed or bright as with my left eye.  The peripheral vision test at my optometrist's office showed quite a lot of blank spots in my peripheral vision in that eye.  I assume that I've lost some vision at several spots in that retina due to the laser "welding" that my surgeon did to re-attach my retina.  This appears to be the final outcome of the vision in my repaired eye.  If so, I find this a very fair bargain.  My vision in my right eye would have been completely lost without the sight-saving surgery that I had back in December,  The loss of some peripheral vision in various spots in that eye appears to be the cost of that incredible surgery.  I'll take that bargain any day.