Distortion after retinal dettachment / vitrectomy

[thefunkyjoint]

About 3 months ago i had a retinal dettachment on my left eye. At the point i had the surgery, my retina was 30% dettached but only on my peripheral vision (lower left which is actually top right physically i guess) ; overall my vision was very good except the 'black curtain' on the lower left area , so i'ts was 'macula on' case.

Everything went fine on the surgery and i'm still on the recovery process ; although the big gas bubble is gone, i still have a lot of 'fish egg' little bubbles , i can see them only when i look up. It's not bothering much and the doctor says it's impossible to know when (or if) the little bubbles will be gone.

I'm happy the surgery could preserve my vision but at the moment i have a lot of distortion / wavy lines and things about 30% smaller on this eye. This was a bad surprise for me as i was expecting some vision loss on the dettached area but not on my central vision (which was not dettached).

As i work with computers, the distortion is very annoying. I've searched here and seems to be a common issue on this kind of surgery. But i'm curious why this happened ? I've done OCT and ultrasound exams and doctor says everything is fine with the eye, it's just the normal recovery process and the distortion may improve (or not) over time.

[John C Hagan III, MD, FACS, FAAO]

There are several possible explanations: If you wear glasses and had a 'scleral buckle' when you had your RD fixed it makes the eye longer, more nearsighted and changes the glasses prescription. Making an eye more myopic will make images smaller. You can ask your retina surgeon if it is okay for your general ophthalmologist to do a glasses. test. SECOND and ask the retina surgeon this also, on the test called MACULAR OCT   1. do I have a epimacular membrane?  2. do I have macular edema (swelling)     Discuss in detail with the surgeon what you have and what you expect.  Those are by far the 3 most common causes of your complaint.  Also recall if you have a spontaneous RD in one eye the risk of RD in the other is extremely high. As your surgeon what activities to permanently avoid (such as contact sports, amusement park thrill rides, etc.) and be sure down the line if you have and of these: sudden increase of floaters, flashes of light like lightening or loss of field of visin it is an emergency to get in and see an ophthalmologist. Good luck