Eye Health and Macular Disease

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

It is a genuine pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Nokes. I wish you, and everybody here, a happy new year.

I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing the debate on this neglected topic. Not for the first time, my comments will echo those of my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), because today I will focus on the damage that refractive eye surgeries can do to health. In particular, I would like to talk about my constituent, Darren Clixby.

Like many of us, Darren had lived much of his life needing glasses or contact lenses for short sight. As many people have, he heard the messages about laser eye surgery, and its promise to make life easier and better. He also heard the statistics that are bandied about regarding the rarity of serious complications, so he paid his money and went for it in January 2009, but I am sorry to say that the damage immediately after the surgery was awful.

Darren was in tremendous pain. He could not open his eyes at all until the following day and, when he did, his vision was unrecognisable. It was filled with sunbursts coming from light sources, with halos arounds them, with images that overlapped and with many floaters, which are small objects that persistently stay in the vision no matter where someone looks; I have loads of them in my eyes.

Having such damaged vision was distracting, disorientating and very distressing. Darren could not function. He had been told that this was merely a temporary effect and that it would go away after surgery, so he took sick leave and he persevered in that hope. The weeks passed, then the months, and the problems with his vision simply did not go away. Understandably, Darren became increasingly distraught, anxious and depressed. At check-ups, he was told time and again that it was temporary. He was fobbed off with steroid eye drops, which did nothing.

He was then offered another procedure with the same company, using an alternative refractive surgery technique, then another, via a private referral to Moorfields Eye Hospital, and then another. Darren has now had five separate refractive eye surgeries, four of which were to correct the damage of the first. None of these operations have helped. In fact, Darren believes they have just made things worse.

All of this time, Darren’s mental health was deteriorating. He found his work as a solicitor increasingly impossible because of the psychological damage that resulted in a diagnosis of severe depression and anxiety, which remains 13 years on. He resigned from his job and endured 18 months out of work. Even now, after getting a new legal role, he has found it difficult to continue and he had to resign 18 months after starting that job. Eventually, in 2012, Darren had to stop the process of repeated surgeries, and disengage to protect what was left of his mental health. It has taken him many years to come to terms with what has been done.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Lady for sharing what surgery can be like. I have a diabetic constituent who asked a consultant if laser surgery would be appropriate. Unfortunately, as a result of that surgery he lost his eyesight in its entirety. Today, he has no sight in either eye. When it comes to surgery, the hon. Lady is absolutely right and I thank her for the reminder that it does not always work. People need to be careful and aware of that.

[Ms Lyn Brown]

Darren now believes that there is nothing that can be done significantly to repair the damage to his sight. He has uncomfortable, dry eyes every day of his life, which become far worse after reading or concentrating for long periods. He cannot see clearly in low-light conditions or drive after dark. Even crossing the road can be dangerous because it is hard to judge the distance between cars.

Darren believes that he was not fully informed about the risks before his surgery. He has no trust in what little regulation or self-regulation exists via the General Optical Council and the General Medical Council. This was a private, elective procedure that Darren paid for. Surely to heavens, the company that performed the surgery should be responsible for the best possible aftercare, and for making it right. In 2017, Darren again contacted the company responsible for the original surgery. It was made absolutely clear that it would offer him nothing. Effectively, it told him to go away, to stop being a nuisance and to stop getting in the way, frankly, of it making more money.

As always, the NHS has been left to pick up the pieces after poorly regulated private medicine has failed. I ask the Minister how much is this costing the NHS across the country? It would be good to know. Does she have any information to hand on that? We need to create a system where patients are genuinely informed about the real risks; a system where there is proper recourse to a regulator when things go wrong, and where private companies are held responsible for their failings and the cost.