Slightly off topic but optom help needed please!

[Sweet]

Michael,

Gee when it rains it pours with you doesn't it?!!! LOL!!! I was sorry to read about the floaters and was going to post and say that I have noticed more since piggy backing which I think is just down to me having better vision as I can wear a lens for longer! And then ... I read your posts about a detached retina and thought wow, floaters are the least of your worries right now!!!!

I am so glad that it was picked up and that you have had treatment for it! Take good care of you, love Sweet X x X

[Anne B]

Really sorry to hear about your problems, hope it is all back to normal ASAP.
if you need any advice on detached retinas then speak to my hubby! His Dad has one and he has been taking him to hospital checkups! Hubbys nearly going mad what with me and my KC and his dad who had cataracts and now the retina problems he spends more time in eye departments than he does at work! i suggested a career change but he wasn't amused

All the best, thinking of you
anne

[Michael P]

Thanks everyone for your kind thoughts.

The eye certainly feels more comfortable now. It's quite weird though looking through the gas bubble. There is a spirit line effect and as my head moves, so does the bubble.

It's a catch 22 situation. If one has a cataract op then there is a risk of having a detached retina and vice versa. Unfortunately there is also apparantly an increased risk of having a detachment in the second eye once it has occurred.

I cancelled my golfing holiday, possibly prematurely, but hey I have saved myself many hundreds of pounds which has pleased my wife no end .

Just before I was whisked up to the operating dept, I was trying out some soft lenses specially designed for KC and which I was told can be suitable for more advanced cases providing the cone is central. I will report on further developments under a new thread as soon as I have further news on this.

[Pat A]

Michael
I think you are very sensible cancelling your golfing holiday - but an idiot for letting on to your wife the real reason why!! (HE HE! - you could have earned lots of brownie points )

Seriously (can I be serious???) you probably would have been taking a big risk to fly so soon after the op, and could have done permanent damage - not to be recommended methinks.

Anyway you probably wouldn't have been able to see the golf balls - so you would have played badly and then really got upset!!

Take care - hope all continues to progress well

Pat xx

[Michael P]

Now I am really beginning to get a bit worried

I have had my post op at MEH today and the retinal surgery went very well, BUT,
my eye pressure is 32 wheras it should be between 10 to 20. I have been taken off Maxidex and other drops have been prescribed which will hopefully lower the pressure.

Having done a Google search I see that there is an increased risk of Glaucoma following a detached retina.

My three questions are:

1) How worried should I be?
2) Is 32 very high?
3) If I did end up with Glaucoma, could it also affect the other eye?

[Andrew MacLean]

1) Probably not too worried because they discovered your elevated IOP and have been able to take steps to remedy it before it damaged your sight.

2) 32 is above normal. One problem in this is that we all vary our IOP during the day, with the highest values being recorded in the morning, and the lowest in the early aftrnoon. The important thing is that they discovered that you had an IOP that was above the normal range and immediately took action to bring it down.

3) Possibly not: Glaucoma comes in different varieties with different causes. If I were you, I'd ask my doc straight up if this was going to be a problem for both eyes, but again you are in the comfortable position of being examined regularly by an ophthalmologist who is looking for early indicators of glaucoma so that they can head it off at the pass!

All the best

Andrew

[GarethB]

Michael,

On the eye pressure alone, I have been told by my optom and specialist that eye pressures on a KC are not as reliable as the results they get from a 'normal' eye. At my hospital they take the eye pressure at first diagnoses on a KC eye. When it does done again it is compared back to that to see if it has gone up or down by an abnormal amount.

[Michael P]

Thanks Andrew and Gareth ( welcome back).

My eye pressure immediately after the op was 12 so I was a little surprised it has increased in the interim. It was fine after the cataract op in February.

I have to take the drops for one month and stop three days before my next visit to MEH. Presumably if it is normal after three days off the drops then all is well. Time will tell.

When I went to have an eye test at Costco recently, the optom used some machine,to check eye pressue, which blew air into my eye which I found rather unpleasant and the optom could not get a meaningful reading ,presumably because of my KC.

Is this a new way of checking eye pressure or simply the use of inferior and cheaper equipment?

[helen]

Hi michael, as regards the pressure machine which puffs air (non-contact tonometer), it isnt inferior or cheaper (probably more expensive than a goldmann add-on to a slitlamp) but is easier and is used by high-street optoms as a screening tool, not diagnostic. To use the same as hospital eye departments (goldmann contact tonometer) would mean anaesthatising every patient.

We agree the non-contact tonometry can be less accurate in patients such as keratoconics, but as a screening and referral tool, it works just fine.

Any other optoms feel free to contradict me and disagree, but this is what i have been taught!

[Michael P]

Hi Helen and welcome.

Many thanks for taking the time to answer my question.