Why can’t laser eye surgery cure blindness? Eli5
I’ve been told I’ve got diabetic retinopathy and it’s getting worse. They mentioned potential ‘sudden vision loss’ and I went on a wild internet search and ended up here. Can someone tell me how laser eye surgery can make eyes see perfectly when they usually need glasses for severe vision impairment but can’t do anything for full vision loss? Please. Like I’m five. Thanks!
In: Biology
More ELI5 than some of the other answers:
The part of your eye that is broken is not the part of your eye that kind of surgery can fix. The kind of surgery that makes people not need glasses fixes a part of the eye that is very close to the outside. The part of your eye that is broken is deep inside.
There is another kind of laser surgery that helps with the deeper part. It stops bleeding deep in the eye, which can help some people with diabetic vision issues see (I’ve taken my father-in-law for this kind of surgery twice). As you can imagine, if you had a lot of blood inside your eye, you’d have trouble seeing, because blood isn’t clear. But even that kind of surgery doesn’t completely fix the problem, it just stops the bleeding, which helps the most noticeable symptom.
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