A question for all who have had a graft

[chris1972as]

I am in a dilema at the moment, told by a doctor I have very little tolerence to contact lens and told this doctor is to write to my surgern requesting that I have a graft, now the dilema is, after this graft operation how many people have had to continue wearing contact lens to correct their vision? Because the doctor told me i would not have to wear them anymore

[Andrew MacLean]

Post Graft, I do wear glasses for my right eye and I have a contact lens for my left. I guess, if push came to shove, I may have been able to get by with glasses, but on the upside I was completely contact lens intolerant before my graft and now I can wear a lens in my left eye with no bother at all.

Andrew

[longhoc]

Hi Chris

Unfortunately it is impossible to predict the final outcome for your best uncorrected vision post-graft. You might get "excellent" vision (i.e. 20/20). Or you might get worse, sometimes a lot worse. Occacsionally, you can get real issues. Did the doctor really tell you that you’d not need lenses ? If so, that was somewhat unwise and misleading as there’s no such certainties unfortunately.

That doesn’t mean though that you’d need definitely lenses. You might end up being able to use glasses like Andrew does for one eye.

How do you feel about having a graft ? If you’re all for it and not remotely concerned by any possible less-than-ideal outcomes then your decision is made. If you’ve got some second thoughts, then have you considered or tried some of the lens types other than the usual RGPs ? (if you’re not sure what’s available apart from these, let us know).

Best wishes

Chris

(PS -- for me, 7 weeks on post graft, it's too soon to tell. With the pin hole test, I can get the 6th line on the Snellen chart just about, that's 20/30. Whether I'll hang on to that standard, and whether I'll need lenses or glasses, that won't become clear for maybe another 12~18 months. There really are no guarantees ! Hopefully others will post to say exactly what they've ended up with and how they need either lenses or glasses to do so. Please be aware though that "individual results may vary" -- just because, say, 10 people post that they get 20/40 or 20/25 or whatever either uncorrected or with glasses does not mean you will. But I'm sure you knew all that anyway so lecture over )