Retinal detachment treatment by Scleral Buckling

Scleral buckling is a type of surgery performed to treat the retinal detachment. Scleral is a visible white color tissue around the eye. And the retina is a thin layer at the back of our eyes which takes the light and transfers the information to the brain. When a segment of your retina gets detached from the eye, retinal detachment happens. So as a result the patient loses vision completely or partially. In this situation the patient must visit an eye doctor to start the treatment procedure quickly.

Scleral buckling procedure can be also performed to heal retinal tears (a condition in which the retina would not detach entirely from your eye and shapes a tear). You should notice that scleral buckling is one of the options used to treat retinal detachment. One of the indications of retinal detachment is that you may see some floaters or maybe some light flashes in your sight. Your lateral sight may decrease too.

Scleral buckling procedure

During the surgery, your doctor would join a piece made of silicone to a part of your detached retina on the eye’s white part. The buckle’s function is to push the sclera to the torn retina. Your doctor may give you some instructions before the surgery. After that, first of all your eye surgeon would anesthetize you. In some cases you may be awake so that an injection or eye drops are used to numb your eye. Then he would make a small cut on your sclera (the white part of eye). He will attach a buckle around the eye’s outer layer by stitches. This will push the sclera and help the torn retina to heal.

In some cases the doctor may get help from a laser to burn that tear part and stop any further detachments.

Another method is Cryopexy in which your surgeon uses a very cold instrument to help the sealing process of your retina tear.

What is cryotherapy?

Cryotherapy method is a way in which doctor tries to freeze your retina by placing a very cold tool on your eye wall.

This helps the retina to attach to its place properly by making an adhesive scar in the tearing part.

After all these your doctor would use antibiotic ointment too.

Symptoms of needing a scleral buckling surgery

Some of the indications of retinal detachment that can lead to a scleral buckling surgery are such as:

• Blurry vision can be one oh them
• Some people may see a shadow in their vision field
• Your lateral vision may decrease slowly
• You may see some floaters in your vision area suddenly
• Patient may see light flashes in both eyes or only one

Scleral buckling complications and risks

As every other eye surgeries, scleral buckling has some risks too. We mention some of these rare but possible complications:

• There is a layer under the retina which can be detached
• Eye bleeding is possible
• Incarceration of retina might happen
• In some cases eye infection occurs
• Eye nearsightedness (also known as myopia) may increase
• Cataract is possible
• Intraocular pressure might increase
• Some people might have double vision
• New retinal parts may get torn too

Retinal tearing recurrence is also possible. In this case your doctor would prescribe another surgery to treat your retina.