Clear sight after 28 years of blurred vision

By Rawlings Otieno

Stephen Thigo was born with a rare eye complication.

Two years into his life, he was diagnosed with hyperopia, a hereditary sight condition. Hyperopia is also known as farsightedness, longsightedness or hypermetropia.

It is a defect of vision that causes difficult focusing on near objects, and in extreme cases causing a sufferer to be unable to focus on objects at any distance.

At that tender age, Thigo was referred to Kenyatta National Hospital where specialists prescribed powerful lenses to improve his vision.

He was to wear the cumbersome glasses for next 26 years.

Last week, however, life turned for the better after he underwent laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis (Lasik) surgery, a specialised procedure to correct the defect to near perfection.

The operation is a type of refractive surgery for correcting myopia so that the patient does not need to wear spectacles or contact lenses.

Before the surgery, Thigo had a difficult time. He recalls: "During my childhood, I used to stay indoors because my vision was so Things got worse as I grew up and I was taken to see a doctor all the time."

With the lenses, the toddler was for five consecutive years forbidden from taking part in any contact games with friends lest they broke his glasses. The glasses then started failing and a more powerful pair was needed.

"My vision kept on failing to indescribable limits until 2000 when I visited another eye consultant who prescribed an operation called retinal detachment," adds Thigo.

Nothing changed much and relatives and friends started thinking of taking him abroad for a specialised treatment when lady luck came knocking.

Four years ago, Thigo was browsing the Internet to learn more about his condition when he bumped into Lasik surgery. The procedure had not been introduced in Kenya.

"After inquiring from specialists, I he discovered that it was only being offered in Germany," he says.

Because he could hardly raise air ticket to Europe, he gave up on it until about a month ago when a friend informed him that the procedure was being conducted in Kenya at the Eagle Eye Laser Centre.

"When I heard about the Lasik procedure being carried out, I thought of convenience and affordability of the operation. I didn’t have to travel abroad for my treatment," says Thigo.

According to Wanjiku Kiumbura of the Eagle Eye Laser Centre, 95 per cent of people who have undergone refractive surgery no longer need their specs or contact lenses.

Lasik eye surgery is designed to correct problems in the structure of the eye that lead to common vision problems such as myopia, hyperopia and astigmatism.

The procedure involves the doctor making an incision in the eye to create a flap, which is peeled back and allows the laser access to remodel a specific part of the cornea. After the procedure, the flap is carefully placed back to ensure there is no air or dirt trapped and is left to heal naturally.

Farsightedness or hyperopia, occurs when light entering the eye focuses behind the retina, instead of directly on it and is caused by a cornea that is flatter, or an eye that is shorter, than a normal eye.

Hyperopia is a refractive error, which results from a disorder rather than from disease. A refractive error means that the shape of the eye does not bend light correctly, resulting in a blurred image.

Blurred vision

Its symptoms include: Blurred vision, difficulty seeing objects up close and crossing of the eyes in children also known as esotropia.

In severe cases of hyperopia from birth, the brain has difficulty merging the images that each individual eye sees. This is because the images the brain receives from each eye are always blurred.

A child with severe hyperopia has never seen objects in detail and might present with amlyopia or the ‘lazy eye,’ where one of the eyes is dominated by the other. If the brain never learns to see objects in detail, then there is a high chance that one eye will become dominant.

The result is that the brain will block the impulses of the non-dominant eye with resulting amblyopia. In contrast, the child with myopia can see objects close to the eye in detail and does learn at an early age to see detail in objects.

The child with hyperopia will typically stand close in front of a television.

One would have expected that the child will stand far to see, but because the brain has never learned to see objects in detail and the child with hyperopia from birth presents with the picture of decreased visual perception.

The parents of a child with hyperopia do not always realise that the child has a problem at an early age.

A hyperopic child might have problems with catching a ball because of blurred vision and because of a decreased ability to see three-dimensional objects.

The child will typically perform below average at school. As soon as a child starts identifying images, a parent might find that the child cannot see small objects or pictures.