silicone gel

[rogo60]

i under went a vitrectomy in November of 2008 on my right eye.  it is now July 09 and I still cannot see out of my right eye.  the vision is a total blur, along with double vision.  My surgeon, who is supposed to be one of the best, told me that it would take time for the gel to clear, not to worry.  At every visit he told me it looked great!!!.  Every time I asked about why I could not see through it, I got the same spill,  "Give it time".  Well I'm tired of it, when I drive at night it looks like four headlights coming at me when I meet a car.
My surgeon recently informed me to go see a doctor about a contact or glasses.  He stated I needed a lense with a power of 8.0 with a stigmatism of 125+.  So, I get the lense and it does clear my vision a little, but still not good enough.  Now he informs me that I need glasses on top of the contact because my eyes are looking on two different plains.  The left looks straiht, but the right looks up some value of 4.  I am not happy with this.

My quesiton is will replacing the silicone gel with saline improve any or all of these conditions I am currently experiencing?  Eight months is long enough, in my book, to wait following this surgery.

[ragu54]

A related discussion, procedures was started.

[Michael J Kutryb, MD]

mjk

[berrywoo]

If you're referring to silicone oil then the best time to correct vision is after removal of the oil. If the oil is still retained then of course your vision will be effected significantly. Even with a refraction and new rx-ed lenses your vision will not be "normal", but it may help some. Again, the best chance of having "normal" vision would be some time (a month atleast) AFTER oil removal.

At eight months with oil tamponade, I'm wondering how stable your retina is....was the PVR bad enough to warrant indefinite oil retention? Most surgeons like to remove the oil if possible somewhere between 3-6 months because studies have shown this to be an adequate length of tamponading and they know that best visual acuity is only possible without oil.

Also, most retinal surgeons don't really do refractions.

The turning of the eye may be responsible for some of your symptoms as well. Which definitely needs to be corrected if you want the vision from each eye to fuse well together. But it will need to be addressed AFTER the retinal problems are dealt with.