Retina Surgery Complications

Repairing a detached retina or treating a vitreous hemorrhage, which occurs when blood vessels rupture and spill blood into the fluid that fills the eye, often requires surgery. In serious cases, the surgery may involve draining the eye's fluid and replacing it with a gas or affixing a band to hold the rest of the eye against the retina. These more invasive and complicated surgeries have the greatest chance of failing or leading to blindness or inflammation.

Failure

• A fact sheet from the National Eye Institute states, "With modern therapy, over 90 percent of those with a retinal detachment can be successfully treated, although sometimes a second treatment is needed." Patients have a high degree of responsibility for ensuring that retina surgery does not fail for purely physical reasons. A patient education pamphlet from Australia's Royal Adelaide Hospital notes that patients must maintain a specifically prescribed posture for 50 minutes of every hour to ensure that reattached retinas do not become detached and that injected gas bubbles or implanted bands do not shift position. Patients also need to forgo heavy lifting and strenuous exercise for weeks or months. Patients may spend much of the early part of their retina surgery recovery time confined to bed.

Vision Loss

• The NEI also alerts patients that their vision will likely not improve to pre-injury quality after recovery. Specifically, the organization notes, "Even under the best of circumstances, and even after multiple attempts at repair, treatment sometimes fails and vision may eventually be lost." Patients, then, need to weigh the risk of decreased visual acuity or blindness following retina surgery with the almost assured blindness that will result if retinas and retinal blood vessels do not get repaired.

Pain

• Retina surgery involves cutting into and burning or freezing various parts of the eye, so patients will experience some discomfort after the procedure. Doctors typically prescribe nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen, naproxen or celecoxib (Celebrex from Pfizer) to relieve a patient's eye pain, minimize swelling in the eye and prevent him from shifting out of the prescribed recovery position due to soreness and stiffness.

Infection

• After undergoing retina surgery, patients must wear an eye patch and wash their eyes with sterile cotton and water each day. This helps prevent infections. Patients need to contact their doctor immediately if they experience an increase in eye pain or notice a discharge of pus or mucus from their eye.

Sympathetic Ophthalmia

• When one eye gets punctured, the middle lining of the other eye can become irritated and inflamed. Though this happens rarely, the condition, known as sympathetic ophthalmia, can develop as much as a year after retina surgery. The main symptom and outcome of sympathetic ophthalmia is reduced vision. Treating the condition requires the use of corticosteroid eye drops such as difluprednate (Durezol from Sirion Therapeutics). Some patients with sympathetic ophthalmia may also require an oral corticosteroid such as prednisone or an intravenous immunosuppressive medication such as cyclosporine (e.g., Neoral from Novartis).