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Cataract surgery last Jan. and Feb. and still cloudy

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sadbrad
sadbrad

Hi, my wife had both eyes done last year in January and February. She had the following laser "clean-up" it was called because of cloudy vision. She went through all drops and directions for compresses and was told by the doctor "I don't see any reason for it other than maybe dry eye". Then was sent to another clinic. There she was given more drops for dry eye, and then was scheduled for scraping and polishing of her cornea because she was told that the dry eye has created a pitted surface that he could fix. Which was done early this year in January. Afterward, following the surface proceedure and having many drops to take...an extended follow-up period followed due to "not yet healed". Then yesterday the doctor said there is nothing else he can do surgically and he doesn't think it is worth doing anything to the other eye"...bye bye. It felt like being sent out the door of a hospital after being told you have amnesia. My heart just sank for my wife as I know how troubling and disappointing this whole experience has been when she expected no trouble...only success. Now we do not know what to do or where to go. We would go to the best eye clinic in the country...if we knew where that is. Please do not reply "Dever's Clinic in Portland OR"...been there, done that.

3 likes, 19 replies

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  • softwaredev
    softwaredev sadbrad

    Posted

    The procedures you refer to dealt with the lens (cataract surgery) and the cornea (the dry eye and surface procedure), so I have to wonder if the problem is elsewhere in the eye, like the retina, and whether you'd consulted a specialist for that.

    You don't state whether she had good vision immediately after cataract surgery or not. Even if she didn't, the issue may have nothing to do with the cataract surgery. Sometimes a cataract will keep people from being aware there is some other eye issue they have as well and so a  cataract surgery will only fix part of the issue. Alternatively if the issue arose after surgery, it may just be coincidence that it arose shortly after. WIth millions of people getting surgery each year and millions developing other eye issues, some unlucky minority will happen to get an unrelated eye issue soon after surgery.

    Your reference to Portland indicates you are in the US (there are many posters on this site from the UK and elsewhere). In terms of the "best eye clinic in the country", one ranking of eye hospitals is done by US News and World Report. This site sends a post to the moderator if you include a link, so to avoid that, if you google this you should see the ranking as the first search result:

    "us news and world report rankings eye hospital"

    There may be other places that do rankings but I hadn't searched.  I've seen some critique their rankings for other specialities are more objective than those for eye hospitals (reportedly they lack data to make it more objective), but that the listed ones are definitely well respected. 

    As someone else suggested you could also see if there is a ranking for the best local eye doctors in the local media. Sometimes a local city magazine or a newspaper will occasionally publish such a list if you search their sites. There is at least one company that provides rankings of the best doctors, but they don't provide it to the public but instead license it to insurance companies (who tell their customers, so you'd likely know about it if yours had it), or to media outlets. The rankings are often based on surveying doctors to find out who they would use for treatment. Alternatively there are sometimes merely polls of the public for "best of" lists in local media, or various consumer sites to rate doctors, which may be better than nothing.

    • sadbrad
      sadbrad softwaredev

      Posted

      She didn't have the cloudiness before when she was just wearing glasses. It has been this way since the initial surgeries...and was told it would get better. The cornea proceedure did improve her vision in her right eye from 20/40 to 20/30 with glasses. Her left is slightly better in regards to vision and clarity...but it too is cloudy.  Nothing is seen on her retinas and both the original and the cornea doctors say they see nothing other than that slight fold mark near the edge of her right lens...and they have both added that the mark is common to being present and it shouldn't be causing her this effect.
    • softwaredev
      softwaredev sadbrad

      Posted

      If these doctors don't see a problem then it makes sense to consult others, unless she can live with this quality of vision, though the risk is of course that there is some problem that will get worse. Medical science isn't yet perfect, and people's visual acuity can declline with age even without any treatable problem, even if on average it should be better than she has.

      re: "She didn't have the cloudiness before when she was just wearing glasses."

      It isn't clear when you are referring to. I assume this must have been before she had cataracts, since presumably she had cloudiness reducing vision before she had cataract surgery since that is why they perform it.  They don't usually perform cataract surgery until someone's vision is worse than 20/40 since that is usually when insurers (and government) will pay. That suggests the possibility that whatever reduced vision afterwards might have been part of what reduced vision before cataract surgery, and they simply weren't aware of it. Perhaps the cataracts weren't even bad enough to have an impact on vision and it was this other issue that caused the reduced vision.

      I suppose you might be saying that the cloudiness she experienced after surgery was different than the cataract cloudiness before surgery, but its possible that the cataract surgery merely changed how whatever visual problem she had was being perceived. 

  • sadbrad
    sadbrad

    Posted

    She didn't have the cataract surgery due to cataracts. It was finally done because they could only get her to 20/80 with glasses...and her insurance wouldn't allow the surgery until her vision reached that point. She's been extremely near-sighted all her life and in glasses since the age of 2yrs.. If my memory is correct...at the time she was told she could only be corrected to 20/80...cataracts were barely present or just beginning to develop.
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