Why is visual loss important to study?

Postoperative vision loss is a rare but devastating complication of non-opthalmic surgery.  Patients have developed visual loss or complete blindness in one or both eyes following uneventful surgeries on the heart, spine and blood vessels, as well as reconstructive surgery and other surgeries.  Ischemic optic neuropathy (ION) is one common diagnosis.

The cause of this type of blindness is still only theory.  A variety of causes or contributing factors have been suggested, such as:

• low blood pressure during surgery
• a low number of red blood cells or hemoglobin (anemia)
• too much fluid in the skin on the face (facial edema)
• direct or indirect pressure on the eyeball

The Committee on Professional Liability for the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) hopes to collect a large number of detailed case reports of ION for analysis.

Note to patients

The ASA Postoperative Visual Loss Registry is primarily designed to aid physicians in improving their clinical practice.  We are sorry we cannot address individual patient questions or provide medical or legal advice. You may wish to view a handout in PDF we have made that the summarizes the issues of postoperative visual loss.

www.asaclosedclaims.org