I am very concerned about this should I ever need an operation, but, from all the reading I have done on this subject, I have heard that these operations are very successful. I hope my doctor will not delay in my needing an operation until my vision has been seriously impaired. Needless to say either way, I am worried about the outcome of any future operation. Any intraocular surgery can result in bleeding, infection and blindness. For many years, and actually, until quite recently, glaucoma surgery was considered fairly hazardous and generally regarded as a last resort after the failure of medication and laser treatment to control the disease.
Many ophthalmologists are still conservative when it comes to glaucoma surgery.
However, in the past few years, the success of surgery for open-angle glaucoma has markedly improved. The first major reason for this is, the use of antimetabolites, such as 5-fluorouracil and mitomycin C, to decrease postoperative scarring. This has resulted in a significant improvement in the success rate of surgery, particularly in those conditions with previous intraocular surgery, such as cataract extraction, patients with previously-failed filtration surgery, younger patients, black patients, and patients with complicated forms of glaucoma or glaucoma associated with uveitis. The second advance has been post-laser suture lysis. With this procedure, sutures which are buried under the conjunctiva and which close the flap in the wall of the eye after the trabeculectomy has been performed, can be cut using a laser and a special lens.