SurgSpace / Specialties / Ophthalmic Surgery
Ophthalmic Surgery
Surgery of the eye: cataract, retina, glaucoma and the open globe. The two operations every student should know are here; Mediverse also has a whole platform for the eye, so this specialty hands you across rather than duplicating it.
Backdrop: A surgeon performing cataract surgery · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
Inside the OR
OR & Periop
Shared operative foundations, the room, the instruments, the anaesthetic.
Shared operative foundations taught once, the room they happen in, the instruments on the tray, and the anaesthetic that makes it possible.
Operating on a pressurised globe
The eye's operations share constraints no other field has: a working space measured in millimetres, tissue that must stay transparent, and a globe whose pressure is both tool and threat. Taught once here; the cataract and globe-repair pages assume it.
- 01The closed chamber. Intraocular surgery works inside a pressurised chamber kept formed by infusion: chamber collapse is the shared enemy, and wound construction that self-seals is the shared craft.
- 02Transparency as tissue. Cornea, lens capsule and retina must not scar in the visual axis: haemostasis, instrument choice and touch are governed by optics as much as biology.
- 03The microscope's world. Micron-scale movements under an operating microscope, with the surgeon's hands stabilised and instruments entering through millimetre ports: the motor skills are a discipline of their own.
- 04Pressure physiology. Too low and the globe collapses and bleeds (the dreaded suprachoroidal haemorrhage); too high and perfusion of the nerve suffers: every intraocular operation is a pressure-management exercise.
- 05Why the rules outside theatre follow. The same physics explains the ward rules: no pressure on an open globe, antiemetics to stop vomiting's pressure spikes, and posturing gas bubbles where the retina needs them.
On the tray
No instruments are tagged to this specialty’s operations yet.
Anaesthesia
The airway, the depth, the haemodynamics and the analgesia: the head of the bed has its own rooms.
Enter anaesthesiaWatch and learn
When an operation is best understood in motion
Phacoemulsification: creating the incision and performing a capsulorhexis
Simulated surgery from the Orbis teaching platform, step one.
Source: Cybersight (Orbis) · Watch on YouTubeWatch for
- The clear corneal incision
- A continuous curvilinear capsulorhexis
- What a radial tear costs
Phacoemulsification: hydrodissection and sculpting of the nucleus
Step two: freeing the nucleus and grooving it.
Source: Cybersight (Orbis) · Watch on YouTubePhacoemulsification: segment removal
Step three: cracking and removing the quadrants.
Source: Cybersight (Orbis) · Watch on YouTubeOpen globe repair from a retina surgeon
A Mayo lecture on ocular trauma and the primary repair.
Source: Mayo Clinic · Watch on YouTubeWatch for
- Protecting the eye before theatre: shield, no pressure
- Closing the wound before anything else
- Endophthalmitis prophylaxis
Watch for
Phacoemulsification with IOL
- Incisions and capsulorhexis
- Emulsifying the nucleus
- Cortex removal and lens implantation
- Sealing and after
Watch for
Primary repair of an open globe
- Protection and assessment
- Examination and exploration under anaesthesia
- Watertight closure
- Antibiosis and the next operations
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Hub shaped by the Surgical Specialties Lead with the Ophthalmic surgery reviewer (open seat). Images and videos carry their source; educational use for supervised learning, not clinical guidance.