Anyone here had Epiretinal Membrane surgery? If so, how did it go, how was the recovery, did your vision improve, etc? Here’s a description if anyone’s curious. A thin filmy membrane can develop over the eye’s macula, pinching it and causing vision distortion, but it’s relatively easy to remove. Apparently it’s a fairly common condition with age which doesn’t need surgery until/unless the vision gets bad enough that it interferes with daily life. Surgery will stop the vision from worsening, and may improve it. But can also make things worse occasionally.
One down side is that the surgery requires replacing the eyeball jelly with liquid, which causes cataracts to quickly develop, so I’d need to have that done - probably first, even though they’re only low level now. They prefer to do it first if any are present so they have a clearer view of the field.
I’ve not had the surgery, but have the condition in my right eye. Fortunately it’s only a small spot and causes a little shadow effect on vertical edges.
It would have to get a lot worse before I’d consider surgery. I’ve had cataract surgery over 20 years ago, so that wouldn’t be an issue I guess. I’m 80 years old so maybe never any surgery.
You look much younger in your avatar! Good to hear that yours is stable. Thanks for responding.
Mine is just bad enough that I feel like I’d be better off getting the surgery. It’s interfering with binocular vision and making driving harder. The ophthalmologists all seem confident about outcomes, but my optometrist friend says she’s seen many disappointing outcomes.
What a timely question. My wife had an epiretinal membrane removed a month ago, and just today she saw the surgeon for her one-month followup.
Her membrane was extremely large and long-standing. She’s probably had it for more than a decade, but it was only diagnosed about 3 years ago. Her vision was very distorted in that eye due to the macular pucker; straight lines did not look at all straight to her. She didn’t want the surgery and was pretty accustomed to being essentially blind in one eye, but due to some complications that developed a few months ago she finally decided to go through with it. Because she’s had the membrane for so long, the prognosis for the surgery to substantially improve her vision is not great. The longer the retina is puckered by the membrane, the less likely it is that removing the membrane will cause the retina to fully flatten out. And my wife’s membrane was very large and thick. The surgeon said that on a scale of 1 to 10, hers was an 11. He said it’s what retinal surgeons jokingly call a “mother pucker”.
So she had the surgery a month ago, and had cataract surgery in the same procedure. That is, a cataract surgeon replaced the lens, and then he stepped aside and the retinal surgeon did a vitrectomy and peeled off the membrane. (It had to be done in that order because her cataract was so bad that the retinal surgeon couldn’t see into her eye until the cataract was removed.) The retinal surgeon put a gas bubble in the eye to put pressure on the retina while it healed. He said that he uses a gas bubble in about 2/3 of his membrane surgeries. There were a few post-surgical restrictions due to the bubble; mainly that she was advised not to travel to elevations above 1000 feet, which was actually somewhat awkward due to the geography of where we live. She did not have to maintain a face-down posture as is required in some cases when a bubble is used. She was also restricted from any strenuous activity, which might increase pressure in the eye.
The bubble shrank and disappeared in about 10 days. She had to use three types of eye drops 4 times a day for a couple of weeks. One drop, the prednisone, she has been using for the whole month since the surgery and today the surgeon said he wants her to continue it for another 4 weeks while tapering it off. She had a little minor inflammation which started about a week after surgery, possibly related to the stitches in her eye, but it only bothered her for a few days.
So far, there has been some improvement in her vision, but it’s not clear how much is attributable to the cataract removal and how much to the membrane removal. Her vision is still very poor in that eye. Her peripheral vision is better than her foveal vision. The surgeon says that’s expected, and it could be many months before the retinal completely recovers from the membrane removal, so we won’t know the full effect for quite a while.
Let me know if you have any questions about it. The epiretinal membrane has been a major focus (no pun intended) of our lives for a couple of months.
I had an epiretinal membrane develop about 15 years ago. Noticed that vision in that eye was ever so slightly fuzzy. I was told that my epiretinal membrane was a long term sequela of a retinal detachment and repair that happened way back in the '70s.
15 years was far enough back that I don’t remember much in the way of detail about the surgery. Recovery was completely uneventful. My ophthalmologist warned me that pretty much everyone who has the surgery will develop a cataract in that eye within a few years. And sure enough, I needed cataract surgery about 3 years later. Also pretty uneventful.
Vision returned to normal after the surgery, at least until the cataract showed up. Vision is again fine since the cataract removal.
Yeah, I’m wavering because it’s exactly bad enough that if it were to get any worse, I’d have real problems. But once it goes there, it’s often too late.
I’d been wondering if they do the bubble. Good to know you don’t have to lie face down. I still work full-time and there’s no one else who can do my job. I can manage a week or two off, but not much more.
I’d love to hear about her continuing recovery as it happens.