Any one have ocular histoplasmosis?!

Question: I have had laser surgery and 50 dye injections to find and stop the bleeding in both eyes. Has any one found a new way to treat the histo scars left behind do to the infection with out leaving more scars with a laser?

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Answers: I have had laser surgery and 50 dye injections to find and stop the bleeding in both eyes. Has any one found a new way to treat the histo scars left behind do to the infection with out leaving more scars with a laser?

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Histo is POHS (Presumed Ocular Histoplasmosis syndrome) causes these small choroidal lesions beneath the retina. Some of these allow for growth of new blood vessels which leak and cause a local or focal retinal detachment. Or they bleed and cause a scar. If this occurs centrally, the central vision is damaged.

The treatment depends on the localization of the lesion. Those lesions around the nerve aren't treated. those near the macular center, are. The treatment depends on who is doing the treatment and it depends on the experience of that person.

If they do an angiogram, they'll inject fluorescein into a vein, then take a picture of the dye as is passes through the vessels in the eye. If the dye gets into new blood vessels near or in the lesions, and they leak, that indicates growth of new blood vessels or neovascularization. We used to laser those if they wern't in the center macula (don't want people cooking your macula). Now they use PDT or photo dynamnic therapy where a dye is injected into a vein, and it's allowed to circulate around for awhile. Then a specific wave length of light (towards the red) is shined into the eye to the area of pathology for a certain amount of time. That photdynamic medication gets 'stuck' or is bound to the 'new' vessels but not the normal ones, so the light causes an injury and the vessel to clot or shut off. It then atrophies, and you're all fixed.

sort of...

The surgical removal of those membranes involves a vitrectomy, making a small hole in the retina off to the side, reaching under the retina and grasping the histo vessel complex and removing it from beneath the retina. One then seals the hole with laser and usually places air or gas in the eye so the retina will stay attached while the laserd hole heals. But 50 % of those vessels return, and if the lesion is near the center, one doesn't really gain much vision at all.

The anti-VEGF injections help by making the actively growing vessel not have the stimulus to grow, so it stops growing. But that only lasts about a month or so and you need to get another injection.... over and over. So it depends on the surgeon which pill you swallow, or IF you even want to.

Most have a number of different types of Rx. Years ago we couldn't treat these other than laser, so you're sort of in a 'better' time... at least you have more options.

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Thank you for your answer but as luck would have it im part of the 5% at risk. I have already lost the vison in my right eye and 50% in the left. Report It

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