Eye Surgery Misconceptions
Hi guys,
How are we all doing? It's been an amazing week, November is almost at its end and I can smell Christmas in the air, the Holidays are coming and I know that we are all very much excited about it.
I do hope that we are all doing amazing and taking great care of ourselves though, these times are almost the times when hazards are at their peak, be safe always, and keep your family and loved ones safe.
What I have to share today as usual tends to have been inspired by a patient I saw within the week whose reaction to surgery was so severe and panicky she almost fainted in my office due to her hyperventilating and just being scared out of her mind.
While the mention of surgery alone was enough to put her in a frenzy, there were other misconceptions she had heard from wrong sources or non-professionals which were very very wrong in every way and just made her think about things in the most wrong way imaginable. Which meant a lot of work for me to do.
The Misconceptions
So apparently friends of hers told her that anything involving eye surgery would have doctors literally taking your eyes out of their sockets and doing something to them after which they would be replaced, especially if it involves cataract surgery which is the most popular surgery known by the masses when it comes to the eye.
She was also informed that doctors would be cutting her eyes with knives and that she would almost certainly go blind if she was to have any eye surgery done for her eyes because accordingly, her sources all the individuals they know who may have done one surgery or the other for the eye ended up losing their vision afterward.
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Fortunately for my patient she only had pterygium which is a benign growth on the conjunctiva, mostly harmless, occasionally discomforting when inflamed and in most cases doesn't even need surgical intervention until a certain point. So I explained that she would have to be careful and take good care of her eyes while avoiding the confounding factors that support the growth so it doesn't start to get big which would require excision.
It was just the mention of the minor surgical procedure involving the excision that brought about this whole panic attack. Although she calmed down later when she realized she didn't even need surgery and that I was only educating her I felt the misconception and misinformation may have done her more harm.
Epilogue
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I guess the point of this whole long talk is that I would want us to get information from the right sources and from the right people, professionals in their fields before we start to work with this information or put it in our heads and share it with our friends because your misinformation could cause someone dearly someday.
Could you do yourself a favor and make an effort with what you imbibe from others, verify that it is accurate so it doesn't come back to haunt you later? Once again it is a pleasure serving you, thanks for reading and your time. Have a blissful week Cheers!
Further Reading
Akbari M. (2022). Update on overview of pterygium and its surgical management. Journal of Population Therapeutics and Clinical Pharmacology = Journal de la therapeutique des populations et de la Pharmacologie clinique, 29(4), e30–e45. https://doi.org/10.47750/jptcp.2022.968.
He, S., & Wu, Z. (2022). Biomarkers in the Occurrence and Development of Pterygium. Ophthalmic research, 65(5), 481–492. https://doi.org/10.1159/000523878.
Chu, W. K., Choi, H. L., Bhat, A. K., & Jhanji, V. (2020). Pterygium: new insights. Eye (London, England), 34(6), 1047–1050. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41433-020-0786-3
Hirst L. W. (1998). Treatment of pterygium. Australian and New Zealand journal of ophthalmology, 26(4), 269–270. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1442-9071.1998.tb01328.x
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