An Eye Specialist in Green Bay WI will perform glaucoma surgery under local or general anesthesia. The patient will have a brief hospitalization stay, according to the combined decision of the surgeon and the anesthesiologist. Local anesthesia, which itself is not painful, consists of infiltrating the region of the orbit with a liquid that will diffuse into the eye.
Pain-free techniques
Local anesthesia removes both the pain and momentarily paralyzes the eye movements to allow the surgeon to perform the surgery. The procedure lasts about 30 minutes once the injection is given. A shell is placed on the eye at the end of the surgery.
The hours and days that follow may be marked by a temporary drop in vision, a “foreign body” sensation, and the eye itself may remain red for a few days, with a slightly swollen upper eyelid. In the long term, there is often a small uplift of the white of the eye under the conjunctiva (also called a “bubble of filtration”), which the patient should not worry about. These interventions have a definite success rate, depending on the circumstances, of 60 to 90%.
Long-term postoperative complications have become rare with current surgical techniques (infection, cataract, chronic local irritation with tearing). Annual monitoring of the operated eye remains, however, quite necessary.
Re-operation
A small percentage of anti-glaucomatous surgical procedures can, sooner or later, no longer be effective, resulting in a rise in eye pressure. This is often moderate, requiring only the reintroduction of one or more anti-glaucomatous eye drops. In some cases, the obstruction of the operated area is complete, and a new surgery may be necessary, either to reopen the area previously operated or to create a new valve next to the first one.
These technical details do not differ from the first surgery, but the surgeon will propose more widely the use of an anti-mitotic for the second operation to be successful. In very rare cases, a third surgery by an Eye Specialist in Green Bay WI will be necessary. An assessment of the visual field should be done before refractive surgery, mainly to help the physician continue to reliably monitor the possibility of glaucoma.
