Vitectomy
What happens during a vitrectomy?
Duration 0:58
Professor Andrew Luff, Ophthalmic Surgeon and Founding Consultant, explains what will happen during a vitrectomy procedure. He discusses who will be part of your medical team and what will happen afterwards, before you go home to recover fully.
Professor Andrew Luff, Ophthalmic Surgeon and Founding Consultant, explains what will happen during a vitrectomy procedure. He discusses who will be part of your medical team and what will happen afterwards, before you go home to recover fully.
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You’re admitted to hospital for just half a day. This procedure’s performed under local anaesthesia. It’s very, very rare that you require a general anaesthetic. Once you reach hospital, your pupil is dilated, with drops or a tiny pellet, which you can’t feel. Once you get down to theatre, you meet the anaesthetist who will give you sedation in the back of your hand before numbing the eye with a tiny injection. Once the eye is numb, you simply won’t feel anything, you can’t move the eye and you see remarkably little. It normally then takes anything between 20 minutes and an hour, according to the complexity of the vitreous surgery, at the end of which your eye’s padded. You go back to the ward, we have a cup of tea and a sandwich, and normally within an hour, having picked up your medication to take home, you’re discharged.
