Laser Eye Surgery Forum

Detached Retina

I had laser eye surgery 20 years ago to fix a detached retina. My prescription is quite high -10 and -8. Is implatable contact lenses going to improve my vision given the scarring at the back of my eye?

Many thanks
Yvette

Hi there, I guess you mean retinal eye surgery to fix the retinal detachment, rather than laser eye surgery as we normally talk about here, which is to correct the need for glasses, and does not change the retina found at the back of the eye. Patients with very high myopia such as yours are prone to detachment of the retina, as it is structurally weakened by the myopia. Retinal breaks can lead full-blown detachment as you experienced first hand. If the retina was separated at the back pole of the eye for any length of time, visual loss is usually irreversible. Any form of refractive correction including implantable contact lenses, will not help the scarring at the back of the eye. The best vision you can expect to get following treatment would be similar to that you have now when wearing your glasses or contact lenses. Also, going inside a highly myopic eye can itself cause a retinal detachment in a percentage of cases. If you can see well with glasses or contacts, ie your retina is working fine at the back of the eye, then laser eye surgery or implantable contact lenses could be an option. You will need to have thick corneas to be able to receive a full correction of that degree of short-sight, plus pupils that are not very large in the dark. All these things are routinely measured at a consultation, if you think your vision with corrective lenses is very good you may be suitable for treatment. Hope that answers your question! Feel free to ask anything else.