Macular Hole

[gruffalo28]

No AIBU just posting for traffic.Anyone had one/has one.
Diagnosed yesterday by optician who doesn't know much about it. My sight is very blurry at the moment.I'm only 44, can't imagine having limited sight that glasses won't help/being unable to drive. Seeing specialist tomorrow as it needs to be dealt with urgently just wondered if anyone else has beden here? Thanks

friend had this and as vision problems can be so scary, I hope I'm helping by replying. Important thing is that it has been found and you are being seen by a specialist ASAP.

specialist will advise what needs doing - may just be an injection or could need surgery. If surgery, you may need to do positioning for a while as it involves a gas bubble in your eye. During this time your vision will be blurry and it is going to take some time to resolve. But it should get better. The op will usually trigger a cataract (cloudy eye lens) but that is also very treatable.

It is NOT the same as macular degeneration - there are treatments and I am so glad you got checked out.

wishing you the best.

My mum had this and had a procedure to repair it. It's fine now, but I believe it required a period of bed rest in a face-down position to heal successfully. She had a massage-type bed with a hole, I think.

Thank you for replies. Yes I have seen similar from google re face down rest and cataract. The nhs website also says you will never regain your vision which is scary. I guess I can live like this but the world just seems very blurred and I'm scared of increased risk of getting it in other eye.Do your mum/friend drive and read lots?

How annoying OP - macula holes usually occur in older people.

But don't panic too much, although your vision is unlikely to be quite as good as it was beforehand, it should still be pretty good and you will adapt. Results do depend on the type of hole.

I find most patients (even older ones) get pretty good vision afterwards and only really notice the difference when they have their eyes tested.

Age and speed of referral is on your side.

There is about a 10% chance of it occurring in the other eye. Are you very short-sighted or did it happen after you suffered some trauma to the eye?

I had laser surgery. Originally had a prescription of -4.25 in each eye since I was kid. Pretty stable. Went for laser eye surgery with a leading moorfields eye hospital surgeon. He says laser could not have caused this but I am sceptical.

I had this 11 years ago when I was 45 - it is scary when it happens but it isn't as disastrous as it probably feels at the moment.
You will be able to drive again, the macula provides the fine detail of your vision but the rest of the retina provides the general vision and this is what is used more when driving. Admittedly trying to work out unfamiliar road signs is more stressful as that does need a bit of fine vision!
If your surgery & positioning goes well then you should regain some fine detail vision in your eye. I couldn't even read the first line of the chart when I was diagnosed but by 6 months after the surgery I could just about read six lines (with a bit of squinting...). The positioning , although tedious to do, is absolutely key to your future vision. The gas bubble (tamponade) presses against the retina and macula keeping it as flat as possible, the more effective this is the better your chances.

It is a fact that you won't regain all your sight but it is amazing how much your body adapts - your other eye will learn to compensate and will work harder, and then you just get used to it. Threading needles is a problem for me, plus putting eye make up on my good eye can end up - err- 'creative (!) but otherwise I barely think about it now.

It is a long recovery process though, you will be blind in that eye until the gas bubble disperses (about 6-8 weeks) plus I had some dark vision spots because of the ILM (Internal limiting membrane) peel they did which they warned me would take up to 2 years to disappear completely - and it did, but in all honesty the surgery was so worth all the hassle because of the amount of sight I regained.

The hole is caused by the jelly that is in your eye sticking to the macula as it naturally shrinks through ageing and causing it to rupture - the scan of mine looked like a child's drawing of a volcano at first, it's more like a slightly rutted field now - so it might not have been anything to do with the laser work you had, it may just be bad luck, it was with me

Don't despair - things will get better than they are just now.

Also - yes, you will be able to read again, although it will probably be with reading glasses. I elected to remain short sighted when they did my cataract operation as I wear contact lenses and it would have felt odd to have only one lens in afterwards, fortunately my surgeon agreed with me on this, which means that when I take my lenses out at night I can still read without any glasses at all! Okay so the book is only 6 inches from my nose, but that was normal for me anyway.

I did worry about it happening in my other eye as well, so it was a relief when a retinal scan at my opticians 2 years ago showed the jelly had shrunk away cleanly meaning it couldn't now happen - so it isn't inevitable it will happen to both.

One final thing for now - being face down for the positioning doesn't mean you have to be lying down. So long as your whole face is looking downwards (not just your eyes) you can be sitting down or even walking about. I bought a portable massage headrest - one of those things with the hole in the middle for your face - and used to sit at the table with a portable dvd player underneath it watching box sets & movies with my good eye, this was before tablets came along. I also drank everything including tea and coffee through a straw so I didn't have to raise my head. The novelty of it all kept me going for the first few days!

Thank you somuch short-sighted. I'm going to go and show these replies to my husband in advance of going tomorrow. I'm worried because I also cannot read the top line of the chart. Its like there is a hole in the vision in my right eye (which is my distance eye under the blended vision I was given from laser surgery). There are numbers and things I don't see and my eyes feel desperately tired. I cannot believe I can go from 20:10 vision (it was fabulous on 20th December when I had my last eye test) to thisin the space of a couple of weeks. I'm quite worried about the size of the hole, it seems to have come on very quickly and seems to cover such a wide area already. Oh well, will see what consultant says tomorrow. Thank you for your replies.

It would probably be a good idea to get some glasses which will correct your other eye for distance. At least then you should be able to see a lot better than you can now, if the unaffected eye has been lasers to give good near vision.

I typed “lasered” - bloody autocorrect!

A family friend had one operated on a few months ago. All went fine with the procedure, but she had to lie flat on her face for a week after the op.

Try not to worry too much about your vision just now - because the macula is broken you won't see anything that requires fine detail like numbers & letters. Your eye will feel tired because the optic nerve is working very hard trying to process what it is seeing and make sense of it but it can't at this point. Also its a bit like having a floater in your eye, this bizarreness is what you will keep focussing on because it is new and different, but you probably do still have your peripheral vision. It may also seem worse now than it did at first because your brain knows there is something wrong and is trying to work out what it is.

Depending on what your consultant finds you may not be operated on for a good few months - this is nothing to worry about. A macular hole can wait up to 6 months before surgery with no degeneration in the final result. I was over 4 months between initial diagnosis and surgery. Even in that time your eyes will adapt to what they have. Good luck for tomorrow - it is all very stressful at this point but it does get better.

I had one, had surgery in 2019, a few months before my 50th birthday. I've been shortsighted most of my life, never attempted laser surgery (partly the ick factor, partly because it wouldn't cure it completely).

(I remember one test with lots of little black squares and a red square in the middle - can't remember exactly what I was supposed to do but I do remember noticing that the red square had turned black - my brain was filling in missing information!)

I had a general anaesthetic: apparently they often do this under sedation (!) but before I had a chance to panic the nice specialist said at my age I'd be fine for a general. Went under, woke up in bed with an eyepatch. One overnight in hospital, obviously couldn't drive myself home. Had drops for a few weeks afterwards and spent two days face-downwards.

After a bit I went back to the gym, but when I ran the air bubble in the eye bounced around and split up so I left the treadmill and did cycling instead for a few weeks!

I was told that I'd almost certainly get a cataract, but although they said I have a very mild one I can't tell. My vision has deteriorated - in the sense that the shortsightedness has got worse - but it hadn't entirely stopped doing that anyway. I think there may be a couple of semi-blind spots, but it's hard to tell when I need a new lens as it is.

I don't know whether it's sheer coincidence, but my age-related longsightedness showed itself at approximately the same time. Varifocals are expensive!

Thanks all. Had the appointment today. Will have an operation on Monday, have to be face down for 3 days afterwards. I don't mind any of that but I am a bit scared as to what the result will be. Consultant pretty much said the same as you all did. Oh well, there are worse things.

thanks for the update - lots of good first-hand experience on here. Glad it is being done quickly and wishing you the very best. It is amazing what can be done now and the stories on here are positive. (and yes my friend does drive, read, etc etc).

All the best from me too. Three days is totally doable, you will be all over it!

Totally daft thing and so unimportant in the scheme of things, but anything you want to do near your eyes (pluck your eyebrows, dye your eyelashes, whatever) do it now because you won't be able to do it for weeks after!

Also - I'm sure you would anyway, but wash your hair before the operation so you don't have to do it during the 3 days - you can't get water in the wound and it is a bit of a faff trying to make sure that doesn't happen when you've got an eyeshield on.

Nothing wrong with being scared, I was petrified before mine but afterwards realised there was nothing to be scared about. Take care of yourself and when you can tell us how you got on

Hello, just found this post. I had macular hole surgery last week. Curious to hear how you, or anyone else coped? I can already see the line of the gas bubble in my eye at the top of my vision. Below that it's is v v blurry but can see colours. I've been told facedown/lockdown for 2 weeks. 40 mins in every hour. Sleeping on side at night.

Hi Kittykatkit. Hope it went well, commiserations on the posturing, its horribly uncomfortable and I only had to do 3 days (did 4 in the end).

I also had my op last week - 1 week ago yesterday.I also have the line of a gas bubble on my eye. Very dark and blurry below that but also quite blurry and light sensitive above and can't read at all in the vision above the line in bad eye. I am hoping that blurriness is because the retina is still settling in that eye and maybe the eye drops are making it worse (pupil is very dilated in that eye and apparently that can cause blurriness).
I was so happy when the posturing stopped but now I am spending a lot of time wondering if it worked and whether the blurriness is going to improve. I don't see my consultant until Wednesday week, its not going to be easy waiting another week to see if it has worked. I am homeschooling 8yo DS this week and really struggling to read instructions on screen, at least its keeping me busy. All the best for the rest of your posturing. Was yours very big and what stage was it - mine was stage 2 and was 400(smth)? He says I have a 20% chance of getting it in the other eye which is very scary if I think about it, so I'll try not to.

Well done on the posturing Gruffalo, and I'm glad the op seems to have gone well - welcome back!

So here's the frustrating news - this next bit takes a long time and you won't know how your vision is for at least a month. Even at that, it is only the starting position as your eyesight continues to improve over the next 5-6 months as your eye slowly heals. It is deeply frustrating because you just want to know 'has it worked', but all you can do is be patient and do what your consultant tells you.

The gas bubble takes a good few weeks to dissolve - I was off work for 6 weeks - and until it does you just won't be able to see properly, so don't expect it.

I suspect your appointment with the consultant next week is more for their benefit than yours, to check that all is as it should be post-op, and if they haven't done so already to tell you exactly what they did on the day.

The timescale for me was 10 days posturing, 6 weeks off work while the gas bubble dissolved (wasn't allowed to drive until it did), 6 months until my eyesight stabilised at 6 lines (it may be more or less for you, but every line is an added bonus over not being able to see at all, right?) and two years until all the dark spots had completely disappeared - this last was such a gradual process I didn't actually notice they had gone for ages.

I'm not trying to bring you down with all this - more modify your expectations, because I didn't know what to expect when I had mine and nobody really told me anything until I questioned what the time frame was. I was aghast at both the six months and the two years, but as there is nothing you can do but wait, you just have to get on with it. I did start taking supplements for the initial six months which are supposed to be good for retinas - ones that had lutein and zeaxanthin in them, can't remember which ones exactly now. I honestly don't know if they did any good, but they certainly didn't do any harm and I was determined to give myself every chance I could.

The constantly changing nature of your eyesight is also deeply frustrating - your old prescription no longer helps but until your eyesight stabilises there is no point in getting a new one as it could change again in a couple of months and you are left with yet another pair of useless glasses. The frustration of just not being able to see when I desperately wanted to drove me nuts for a couple of months.

It's not a quick process, it is going to be very frustrating for both you and kitty kat for the next few weeks and months but it is absolutely worth it in the end - hold on to that.

I'm bumping this in hope someone sees it.

Hello, I am actually feeling pretty upbeat about it. Although I am posturing for two weeks I'm feeling confident that it will work because I'm young and the surgery was done within a few weeks of noticing the hole. For smaller holes done early on I think the success rate is above 90% and even if I don't get back to where I was before, being able to focus a bit more with that eye and knowing that it is not going to get worse is great. I have done quite a lot of reading including a lot of academic studies and I'm confident that this is a procedure that they have just got better and better at overtime. At the moment I feel like my world is very small because I can see very little from my left eye And have actually put a patch on it as I prefer that too weird blurry stuff going on. My gas bubble has started to reduce quite quickly so I can see a line quite clearly about a third of the way down. My consultant reassured me that everyone is different – some people can just see blackness for ages while others and see more. So I'm feeling positive for you too! You are also young, the hole was small and only stage 2 (mine was 3) and the surgery was done quickly! I've got kids at home but they are a bit older so I am able to neglect them and watch Tiger King on my iPad which I didn't get round to watching in the first lockdown!

Thanks for message. I agree success rate is high especially if hole found early etc.It is very good to know your surgeon said that people see differently with bad eye. The blackness only covers about a third of my vision now. I suppose I am worried about how blurry the 2/3 bit is but I am hoping that it is normal for what you can see to be blurry (I didn't ask the consultant and it wasn't information provided). I am starting to see the odd thing upside down which I read somewhere else is normal. I have everything crossed for you, as you say the odds are highly in our favour. Take care, when do you finish with posturing?

Thank you, I have another week of posturing but only 40 mins in every hour and just on my side at night. My consultant was very insistent that the vision recovery is v variable - he told me not to worry if I could see nothing for 6 weeks but then wasn't surprised that I can see something! Can't quite see above my line yet but when I try it's not in focus so don't worry!

Reading along with much interest. I have something similar and will need to be prone in recovery.

I had a macular hole in 2018 in my case the bubble took ages to go and as pp have said it can take a few months before your vision stabilises to what its going to be. Eyes are amazing though - in my case it was a big hole that by the time they got me in for surgery was at the end of what they consider the optimum time, my hole closed up completely but I have lost all central vision in that eye. However my preripheral vision has compensated to the extent that I actually don't even notice that I don't have any center vision.