There’s a new way to personalize your body: adding bling to your eye. The bling is called eyeball jewelry. The jewel is a stud made of platinum and comes in four different shapes: heart, music note, Euro symbol, and four-leaf clover. It is about 3.5-mm wide, and it glitters. It is "pierced" into the eye through a process called extraocular implantation.
Apparently eyeball jewelry is now big in Europe and other areas of the globe. Branded as JewelEye, the jewelry and procedure originated in the Netherlands in 2002. People get them purely as a way to accessorize or add extra glint to their eye.
Sounds like a wonderful way to achieve unique looks, but before you jump onto the latest jewelry bandwagon, you should know the risks and dangers to having a foreign object embedded into your eyeball. Then ask yourself: are the risks worth it?
Is eye jewelry implantation available in the United States?
In the United States, eye jewelry implantation has not yet been given the approval by the Food and Drug Administration as medically-safe. The American Academy of Ophthalmology and the American Academy of Optometry support the FDA in this regard, and they urge consumers to avoid this type of eye surgery or implantation as it is a purely cosmetic procedure that has little evidence supporting its safety and has no actual therapeutic use. It doesn’t improve or aid your vision. The FDA also warns against "placing any foreign body or material that is not approved by the FDA in your eye."
To implant the JewelEye, the first step is to anesthetize the eye. The surgeon creates a tiny incision in the conjunctiva (the clear surface of the eye). The jewelry is inserted into the opening. To keep the jewel from moving around the eye, connective materials are placed around the implant.
Dangers of the eye jewelry fad
The American Academy of Ophthalmology lists the following as the specific risks of undergoing eye jewel implantation.
*Ocular bleeding and infection. Findings show that embedded eye jewels do not stay in place as securely as they should. Eye tissues are soft. If the jewel gets dislodged, it can lead to the laceration of the conjunctiva (the outer tissue layer covering the eye) and the underlying tissues. Cuts of perforations of the eye can lead to bleeding and infection, which puts you at risk for blindness.
*Conjunctivitis. Eye jewelry is a foreign material that is placed on the eye for decorative purposes only. As with any foreign body introduced into the eye, eye jewelry puts you at risk for mild to serious, potentially blinding eye infections, such as conjunctivitis (pink eye).
*Bleeding under the conjunctiva
*Perforation of the eye
Can LASIK patients wear eye jewelry?
The Sugarland Eye & Laser Center in Houston, Texas does not recommend eye jewelry implantation, whether the patient may have had laser eye surgery or not. The clinic promotes healthy vision for all and deems that the eye jewelry implantation fad poses dangers to vision rather than promoting good vision. If you want to know more about our one day LASIK event on January 16, 2015 at Sugarland Eye & Laser Center, please visit: www.sugarlandeye.com/newyear2015
Source:
http://www.aao.org/newsroom/release/dangers-eyeball-jewelry.cfm
Sugarland Eye & Laser Center leads in providing premium LASIK technologies to Houston, Sugar Land, and the surrounding region. The Center’s award-winning medical director introduced revolutionary technologies such as iLASIK to the region. This technology is used by NASA astronauts, Navy SEALS and Air Force fighter pilots. At Sugarland Eye & Laser Center, you can now receive the same treatment. For more information, please call (281) 240-0478 or visit us at www.houston-lasik.com.
About the Author
Amjad Khokhar, M.D. is Chief LASIK Surgeon at Sugarland Eye & Laser Center. Add Dr. Khokhar on Google+ here.
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