Blindness after Vitrectomy
A 65-year-old woman noticed problems with the vision in her left eye.
She was seen by an ophthalmologist, Dr. G.
She was diagnosed with an epiretinal membrane (macular pucker).
Dr. G performed a vitrectomy with membrane peel.
Over the following days the patient developed worsening eye pain and was diagnosed with endophthalmitis.
She ultimately went blind in the eye.
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The events are described by the plaintiff here:
The plaintiff hired an expert witness who wrote the following opinion:
The eye clinic and Dr. G were named as defendants.
Both the patient and her husband were listed as plaintiffs.
They offered to settle for $2,000,000 for the patient, and $200,000 for her husband.
A confidential settlement was reached.
MedMalReviewer Analysis:
The ophthalmologists that I ran this case by suggested that the standard of care for endophthalmitis is to perform a vitrectomy once the patient’s vision decreases to light perception. If there are any ophthalmologists reading this, let us know what you think in the comments!
For those of us who are not ophthalmologists, I found this video to be a good demonstration of what a “tap and inject” procedure looks like:
The settlement in this case was confidential, but I found verdicts for similar cases that ranged from $1.2 million to $13 million. Both of these cases were brought against ophthalmologists due to procedural complications that resulted in blindness to one eye.
Here’s a previous ophthalmology case I covered:
![Eye Infection [Patient Goes Blind]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1300,h_650,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff562a5b0-02ea-434a-a4fb-93bf24fe823c_1265x571.jpeg)