[connie3140]

#1060760

Hello,

I’m writing on behalf of a friend who has Graves disease and is considering having eye muscle (Strabismus) surgery. She is concerned about the risks, specifically the loss of vision. Does anyone have any information or statistics on the risks involved with this type of surgery?

Thank you,

Connie

[Kimberly]

#1184610

Hello and welcome – Hopefully, others who have had this surgery will chime in. I have not heard or read of ANY cases of vision loss following eye muscle surgery, although we have one member here who lost vision in one eye due to a cerebrospinal fluid leak that occurred during orbital decompression surgery.

Most of the patients I’ve had contact with were very pleased with the results of their eye muscle surgery. Hopefully, your friend is working with a very experienced surgeon. Also, your friend might check out our YouTube page for videos from Dr. David Granet at UC Shiley Eye Institute, as he does this type of surgery. (The videos do contain short clips of surgical procedures).

https://www.youtube.com/user/GravesAndThyroid/videos

Wishing you and your friend all the best!

[Liz1967]

#1184611

Strabismus surgery involves reattaching the muscles outside your actual eyeball, unlike cataract surgery, for example, which is inside the eye. In browsing Pubmed, I could not even find visual risks associated with this surgery, but as with any surgery, there is a risk of infection, anesthesia issues, etc. Some retinal surgeries used to involve cutting and reattaching muscles to put a band around the eye, and this was easily done by a nonstrabismus surgeon. They do strabismus surgery on little kids. In fact, strabismus surgery is done in adults by a pediatric ophthalmologist. I had this surgery in May. No ill effects whatsoever. I now see single except to the far sides. The biggest risk I think is not getting it perfect the first time and having to reoperate in a few months. This happens less than 30 percent of the time and the reoperations are nearly all successful. Of the five surgeries I have had on both eyes, this was the one that went the best. Pick a surgeon with experience with adult Graves patients as our muscles are fibrosed snd thicker than normal.

[laura1701]

#1184612

I had strabismus surgery in January and am scheduled for a second strabismus surgery in September. Good result from the January surgery in that it made it possible for me to actually fuse images. I just cannot keep the images fused long enough for single vision to be reliable. I have significant enough eye muscle deviations remaining that my brain cannot overcome. So hopefully this second surgery will improve matters! Had an orbital decompression a year ago to save my vision. I believe the risks to vision with TED are mostly associated with possible optic nerve damage from the eye tissue and muscle swelling that comes with this disease. That can catch you off guard especially if you are dealing with this disease one eye at a time. Of course, with any surgical proceedure there are risks involved. Great advice from Liz and I echo it-find a surgeon who sees Graves patients regularly and does strabismus surgeries weekly.

[snelsen]

#1184613

Liz pretty much summed up my experience. Plus remarks by Kimberly.
I had no apprehension and no worried about this procedure. It is super easy from the patient experience view. This is usually done by pediatric ophthalmologists, for this is a common enough surgery in kids.

This surgery, of all my surgeries, was so so so wonderful. Double vision kept me from so many things, like reading and driving. Sometimes there is a need for a tweaking of the surgery if not mono vision all the time, but the is easy too.

This surgery was the one that helped me realize that I would have a normal life again. Even better, I had immediate single vision,same day.

[connie3140]

#1184614

Thank you very much. I will forward your response to my friend.

[connie3140]

#1184615

Thank you, Laura.

[connie3140]

#1184616

Thank you Liz. Now it turns out that my friend’s insurance, Kaiser, turned her down for a CT scan because her Graves’ disease antibodies are too high. I assume that if they become lower, she will be approved and can then consider surgery.

[Author]

Posts