Eye diseases and pregnancy
Are you afraid that getting pregnant will exacerbate your vision problems? Or are you worried that the ones you already have will prevent you from having a natural childbirth? Check out what modern medicine has to say about the correlation of pregnancy and eye diseases.
Effect of pregnancy on eye diseases and vision defects
After pregnancy, patients often report eye irritation and dryness that prevents them from wearing contact lenses. Sometimes they also experience changes in visual acuity, which may be only temporary, but can also turn out to be a permanent progression of the visual defect.
All these disorders are related to hormonal, metabolic and water and electrolyte balance fluctuations. They normalize only some time after the baby is born.
The first attempt to assess whether the problems with visual acuity during pregnancy were temporary or permanent should be made after the end of breastfeeding and the first period following it. The results obtained at that time will be authoritative and will enable the selection of a new eyeglass/lens correction, or will give an ace to diagnostics for laser correction of the defect. Laser correction of a vision defect performed too soon after delivery may result in its recorrection and require further treatment.
If you had a diagnosed visual defect (especially high myopia) before becoming pregnant, you should be under the care of an ophthalmologist throughout the pregnancy. This indication particularly applies to women who have been diagnosed with diabetes, hypertension or corneal cone or glaucoma. This is because it may turn out that your pregnancy will have to be terminated by cesarean section.
When is a visual defect an indication for an elective cesarean section?
Childbirth cannot be done by force of nature if you are diagnosed:
- acute or advanced corneal cone,
- Glaucoma With advanced visual field loss,
- Myopia with subretinal neovascularization,
- Proliferative diabetic retinopathy,
- Cortical blindness and serous retinal detachment in the course of shedding conditions.
CC is also indicated in post-surgical conditions of the eyeball.
A high visual defect alone is not an indication for cc and the widespread belief that natural childbirth when you have “big pluses” and especially “big minuses” is wrong. It is not the number of diopters that determines a referral for an elective c-section, but degenerative changes in the retina, which threaten to detach as a result of exertion and increased eye pressure during a natural childbirth. These changes include:
- Hemorrhages into the vitreous body,
- Tractional retinal detachment developing and progressing during pregnancy,
- Neovascularization of the retina or on the optic nerve disc that does not atrophy (after treatment or spontaneously) until delivery.
Neovascularization occurs in the course of proliferative diabetic retinopathy and involves the formation of new blood vessels, as well as the proliferation of fibrous tissue within the retina. However, these vessels do not have a normal structure, they are more prone to rupture and this results in hemorrhages and hemorrhages, which can even cause loss of vision.
If possible, it is worth undergoing laser photocoagulation of the retina during pregnancy. Improving its condition and a check-up shortly before delivery to confirm that there are no new lesion foci opens up the possibility of a natural childbirth.
Is it allowed to take medications prescribed by an ophthalmologist during pregnancy?
As with other medications, the ophthalmic preparations prescribed to you must belong to Group A according to the classification of the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). Your doctor is familiar with this classification and will certainly not prescribe you Group X drugs, they are completely contraindicated both during pregnancy and in women trying to become pregnant, because they can have teratogenic effects, that is, they adversely affect the fetus.
