Eye surgery has risks

TV Scope: Fifteen thousand Irish people per year now chose to have laser eye surgery to correct their shortsightedness, according to a Prime Time report.

As elective surgeries go, it has to be one of the most popular on the long list of self improving procedures on offer - but, the programme asked, how safe is it?

Concerns over the easy availability of laser eye surgery and the clinical practice of some of the commercial clinics offering it have grown to such an extent in Britain that a House of Commons Select Committee has been established to investigate.

Some of the practices certainly sound dangerous, particularly the clinics where no senior clinician is involved or those surgeries that offer brief and cursory patient suitability assessments.

In a highly competitive market which has seen a proliferation of commercial laser eye surgery outlets, cutting corners is perhaps inevitable.

The biggest issue, the Committee has established, is a deficit of patient information.

Would-be candidates are routinely told all the benefits that such eye surgery will bring but are rarely told the pitfalls.

The programme graphically described what those pitfalls might be.

Six Irish people who had undergone the procedure (it was not clear whether in Britain or in one of the many Irish clinics) were interviewed.

The first three were overwhelmingly positive.

One said that being able to see without contact lenses or glasses had simply changed her perspective on the world.

Testimonials don't get more dramatic than that.

All this was intercut with scenes from an actual, and rather gruesome looking, laser eye surgery procedure on a young man. Then three other people related their own experiences and they would strike fear into the minds of any viewer contemplating the surgery.

One man, brimming with frustration, said he has simply exchanged one set of glasses for another and has begun a trail of visits to eye specialist to try to rectify what he considers the damage done.

A young woman's postoperative "dry eye" is so severe that the resulting pain has meant permanent drops, several days off work and no reassurance that the condition will rectify itself in the future.

Another man, who chose to remain anonymous because he said his eyesight is important for his job, said that while his daytime sight was fine, his postoperative night blindness was so bad that driving was impossible and even going to the theatre or similar dark spaces was "an ordeal".

RTÉ's health correspondent, Fergal Bowers, who compiled and presented this report is always thorough and authoritative and his line up of experts ranged from members of the House of commons select committee to Prof Denis Cusack, an expert in legal medicine.

No definite conclusion was arrived at as to the long-term safety of laser eye surgery but an inescapable conclusion was that patients need to be clearly informed of the potential downside of the surgery.

This is, after all, an elective procedure and at €2,000 per eye, an expensive one.

A particular issue is the potential for night vision problems or "contrast sensitivity".

Prof Michael O'Keeffe summed up the programme's findings: "People should be told the risks."