A little history. During surgery on 2nd eye, Doc says he nicked something (not comforting) so I would have to use drops instead of the shot. It was a monovision procedure. After the distance eye was done, I found that straight lines weren't straight in some places. When reading license plates, a letter might be dropped or one might be slanted. His fix for this was a quick laser procedure to both eyes (10 minutes tops) that did in fact help part of the problem. I think he tried to trim the back of the new lens to remove a wrinkle with a laser procedure. Now, he may have helped the issue a little, but overall vision is worse. I can't read traffic signs until i'm too close in my opinion. Fortunatley he has a plan: PRK in a couple of months.
Anyone have experience with this sort of issue and is the PRK the right next step? My confidence isn't as high as it was when this all started 6 weeks ago.
Sorry to learn about your bad experience.
You can't change what has already happened, but before taking your next step, you must know and be able to tell other people what was done to your eye. Otherwise, the advice you get may or may not be meaningful. Thus,
1. What was the nick to the eye which caused him to use drops instead of a shot?
2. What laser procedure did he to both eyes? One cannot use laser to trim the back of lens to remove a wrinkle. May be, he used laser to clear a natural film which can form in the posterior capsule of the eye, but you need to be sure that that is what he did.
3. What is your distance prescription and uncorrected / corrected vision right now?
If you are not happy with the current surgeon (or even if you are), you should get an opinion from another surgeon in your area. That is probably the most important thing you need to do at this stage
Ragarding the possibility of a PRK to correct the vision, my personal preference will be to use LASIK enhancement (instead of PRK), with which I have had very good results.
I have had a lot of tweaking and I may have one or two more. It is good that we have honest surgeons that let us know that they, like us, are only human... and will do their very best to give us their best effort to correct any problem we may have. It will take months to completely heal, and if a tweaking needs to be done... I will trust my doctor. Each time he has done the laser, I can see more clearly. Be sure to follow the drops and rest he suggests.
I would have probably felt better if the 2nd procedure had improved my vision. It actually worsened it a bit. Leaves me with doubts.
Glad you are comfortable with the approach that your surgeon is taking.
Regarding the "nick," that is the medical term he used when explaining why he needed me to do drops instead of the shot. He did say that he was now concerned that the medicine of the shot might seep in around the lens and damage it.
I will go to my records regarding the 2nd procedure.
Thanks for the update.
As I said before, please make sure to get an opinion from another opthamalogist or surgeon about your issues before taking any major steps to correct them.
I am scheduled another eye surgery Friday afternoon. I still have some astigmatism in my left eye that my surgeon has decided to correct. He will measure my eye just before lasering the cornea. Looks like about two hours total. The Symfony will not be replaced, once the astigmatism is corrected my vision should be 20/20 or better. I am hopeful.
Best wishes for a successful LASIK surgery to correct astigmatism and any spherical error. Please make sure that you let the surgeon know that you don't want him / her to over-correct any spherical error in the process. It is better to end up with -0.25 or 0 instead of +0.25 or +0.50.
The LASIK procedure itself should not take more than 5 minutes. You should not feel any pain either.
Ok, turns out the laser procedure he performed was a capsulotomy and it was on the eye right behind the lens and not the lens itself. It was performed on both eyes. The procedure he is recommending is a PRK but I visited him yesterday for more information. He did tell me that glasses would do the same correction he thinks the PRK would perform and he will fit me with glasses so that we will know in advance whether the issue is the eye which the PRK would correct vs. me just not being able to adjust to the monovision. If I'm not handling the monovision then we would need to look at other alternatives. That seemed reasonable, but a 2nd opinion still seems like a possibility.
Forgot to say it, but thanks for the reply and information.
Thanks for the update.
Ragarding the possibility of a PRK to correct the vision, my personal preference will be to use LASIK enhancement (instead of PRK), with which I have had very good results. Recovery from LASIK is much easier and quicker. You should at least consult a LASIK surgeon before making a decision.
What is your distance prescription (spherical and cylinderical) and uncorrected / corrected vision right now? Depending on what these are for each eye, you may need to try using a contact lens in one or both of the eyes instead of glasses to determine what the best future step may be.
Surgeon took several more measurements of both eyes yesterday. My right eye is better than 20/20. My left eye now follows at better than 20/20 ... the prep was an hour, the surgery was 30 seconds. He lasered both sides of the cornea... I watched the laser of course, I had no choice. I thought the suction cup that came down and vacuum attached to my eye was interesting. Then the laser color was bright red. No pain, but my eye did itch, the nurse put in some drops that stopped the itching. I will return for a check up in about a week. Good close up at 10" to read fine print on my iPhone, and distant vision is very clear. Possibly better than before I started wearing glasses in the 70's. There was a little scratchy feeling this morning, but gone this evening. Eye drops 4x a day for 7 days. It has been worth it all. I went to work as usual this morning with no side effects and excellent vision.
That is great news! Am so happy for you.
Recovery is faster with LASIK, but some surgeons prefer PRK for post-cataract surgery corrections. Obviously there are tradeoffs, neither is perfect so it depends on individual preference and the state of people's eyes. Some think there is less risk of dry eye (which is already a concern post-cataract surgery for some) with PRK, but I hadn't checked the data. I hadn't researched it enough to decide for sure what my preference will be if I do a minor tweak to my slightly hyperopic eye, but I like the idea of avoiding the potential for flap complications with PRK.
For those outside the US (there are many here from the UK), they might check into TransPRK (not approved in the US last I checked). I hadn't looked into it enough to be sure its what I'd use if I had the option, but it seems to make sense. That is an "all laser, no-touch" variant of PRK where the entire process is done by laser. I can't seem to find it now, but I'd recently seen an article from this year suggesting good results for TransPRK using the newest software updates, that its noticeably better than prior results (for some things they used to use average data for some parts of the process from many past patients to guide the laser, but now use data from the current patient's actual measuremetns for more of the process instead).
Glasses (or better, contacts) give a good indication of how well the procedure will work. I'll note though that if they are correcting astigmatism, if the astimatism is irregular, then laser correction can potentially provide a better result since it corrects it more precisely, shaping the surface of the eye to exactly what it should be at every point. That is one of the reasons why a minority of patients see an improvement in best corrected vision after laser (while a minuscule fraction see a very slight reduction in best corrected vision, even if uncorrected may be better, which is a risk, but low enough most don't worry about it, its especially unlikely with a small tweak).
That's good to hear. Enjoy the new eyes!
I had both eyes done left eye in Feb right eye in April of this year. Right eye is great but my left eye is terribl! My vision went from 20/50 to 20/70 . not only can i not see clear my eye turned blue when i had brown eyes . i noticed the color change after right eye and asked the doctor 3 times why is it blue he snapped at me because i told him there had to be a mix up and i gor wrong eye. His response was he would insert a brown illens so my eyes matched. I blew up i told him i researched this before and NEVER heard of i ne eye turning a different color but i called the surgery center too. I believe i have the wrong IOL in my eye. I contacted my insurance and have to wait until j une 16 to see a different doc. If they tell me i have wring lens i am getting an attorney. This is a nightmare for me and I dont believe there is any explanation except he gave me someone else's lens.
You might go back to your insurance company and ask if that is the soonest they can cover it. You might also ask them if you can see another doctor now and get reimbursed after June 16. The vision you quote won't even let you legally drive in the states. That would be a major problem for me. Waiting until June would not be an option. At least in my case, things aren't that bad.
My doctor actually does LASIK, so I think he feels the PRK is a better choice for my situation.
In terms of your vision going from 20/50 to 20/70, is that your "best corrected vision",i.e. your vision if you were wearing glasses or contacts, or merely your uncorrected vision without glasses? The likely issue is tht the lens power is off and you were left a bit nearsighted or farsighted, or that you have residual astigmatism. There isn't an exact formula for determining IOL power, it is an approximation based on statistics from the eye measurements of past patients and is usually fairly accurate for those who had low prescriptions before surgery , but even then it can be off a bit, and there is more of a risk of errors for those who had high prescriptions.
After cataract surgery most people's vision should be correctible to 20/20 with glasses or contacts, or laser adjustment (prk or lasik or some variation of those). That is different from before surgery where even wearing correction vision would be degraded. If 20/70 is the best corrected vision, its possible there was a problem with the surgery, but also possible that there is some other eye health issue going on that you weren't aware of that is causing trouble now. Unfortunately coincidences do happen, with > 20 million cataract surgeries a year, some tiny fraction of them will have the bad luck for an unrelated eye issue to appear.
IOLs aren't colored, they aren't like contact lenses where some come in colors (other than blue blocking IOLs, but the slight tint isn't visible outside the eye, the eye color is from the iris not the lens). Although there are rare slight shifts in color due to changes in reflected light (which would be nothing wrong with what the surgeon did, any doctor would have gotten the same result), that is rare and would likely be a small shift (some people's eyes have coloring that shifts a bit in different lighting even before surgery, so I suspect the rare cases would involve that). Unfortunately a more likely explanation is the bad luck to have some other eye health issue, e.g the AllAboutVision site notes:
"Note that if your adult eye color changes pretty dramatically, or if one eye changes from brown to green or blue to brown (called heterochromia), it's important to see your eye doctor. Eye color changes can be a warning sign of certain diseases, such as Fuch's heterochromic iridocyclitis, Horner's syndrome or pigmentary glaucoma."
There isn't more info on that page, since they moderate links I don't post links, people can google that quote if they want to.