Find quick answers to questions, treatments, emergencies, and data policies at the Instituto Oftalmológcio Fernández-Vega. Discover all the information you need for your ophthalmological care.
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Currently, the Instituto Oftalmológcio Fernández-Vega follows the personal data protection policy set out in Organic Law 3/2018, of December 5, on the Protection of Personal Data and the Guarantee of Digital Rights.
This law requires us to inform the patient that their personal and medical data will be incorporated into an automated file, the purpose of which is the proper management, both administrative and healthcare, of the agreed service.
Our patients can exercise their right of access, rectification, cancellation and opposition, if applicable, by writing to the person responsible for the file: Instituto Oftalmológico Fernández-Vega, S.L., Avda/ Dres. Fernández-Vega, 34, 33012, Oviedo.
The rooms at the Institute are designed to ensure that our patients have the greatest possible comfort. For this reason, each person has a separate room, completely separate from the rest. One companion may stay in the room, and in the case of paediatric operations, if previously authorised by the doctor, the mother and father may stay there.
Given the circumstances surrounding any medical case, it is impossible to provide a reliable diagnosis based solely on the patient’s indications and without being able to examine the patient, so under no circumstances will our specialists provide a diagnosis of any kind based solely on the data referred to by email or telephone if at least a medical examination of the patient’s condition has not been performed in person. In such a situation, our patient information team will provide you with all the necessary means to provide you with a consultation with one of our specialists.
Most of our surgeries do not require hospitalisation, although we have several rooms available for those operations that, by decision of the patient or due to the requirements of the operation itself, require hospitalisation.
Retina and strabismus operations generally require hospitalisation, although transplant and cataract operations may also require hospitalisation, always at the discretion of the doctor performing the operation.
Our patients can check room availability at the Surgery Reception where our staff will inform them about room availability.
LASIK operations do not usually require hospitalisation.
It is vitally important to avoid rubbing your eyes. You should use eye drops as directed. It is advisable to wear glasses as a protective measure in situations where there is a risk of trauma or inclusion of particles. Make-up is not recommended during the first few weeks, as is the sauna and water sports.
No, as with any other surgical technique, there may be complications, although the incidence of these is very low and most of them can be resolved satisfactorily. These circumstances are discussed in the informed consent forms prior to surgery, which you should read carefully and consult in case of any doubt.
The only definitive solution to the problem of cataracts is surgery. Currently, the most appropriate technique is phacoemulsification (dissolving the nucleus of the lens using ultrasound energy to proceed with its aspiration). The lens will be replaced by an intraocular lens. This technique allows us to treat most cataracts by making minimal incisions on the ocular surface.
In young people, the most common technique is LASIK, either with a microkeratome or with intralase, although superficial ablation techniques (ASA) can also be used for low prescriptions. In patients who are not candidates for these techniques, phakic lenses in their different forms can be used.
In older patients and therefore with presbyopia problems, surgery on the crystalline lens with implantation of a multifocal intraocular lens would be more indicated.
Surgery can be considered at any time during the development of the cataract, although surgery in very advanced stages has a higher rate of complications. Perhaps the appropriate time, in general, would be when the patient begins to have difficulties in his or her daily life (work, hobbies, etc.).
During the first few days, a quiet life is recommended to avoid the risk of impacts and to focus on eye care and compliance with the treatment, although in most cases this does not prevent the patient from engaging in work activities that are not risky or require significant visual effort.
Patients are operated on from the age of 20, if they have not recently presented changes in their prescription and provided that their preoperative studies are clear of abnormalities. In some exceptional circumstances, surgery may be performed before this age.
The procedure lasts approximately 15 minutes, during which time the refractive defect usually present in both eyes is corrected.
We normally recommend removing soft contact lenses one week before the initial examination and, if possible, 3-4 weeks before surgery. In the case of semi-rigid contact lenses, this period should ideally be extended to 2-3 weeks before the initial examination. Otherwise, we often find alterations in the studies, which forces us to repeat tests with the usual inconvenience for the patient.
During the intervention you may feel a sensation of pressure and in the immediate postoperative period, a sensation of grit and/or stinging.
Only superficial ablation techniques (ASA) can cause pain during the first few days of the postoperative period. These techniques are indicated in very specific cases (low prescriptions, low pachymetries, etc.), and the doctor will be the one to indicate the appropriate technique for each case and the postoperative treatment that it entails.
It consists of creating a corneal ‘flap’ with a thickness of between 80-120 microns to continue with the carving of the corneal stroma using an excimer laser and the subsequent repositioning of all the structures to recover the initial anatomy.
Phacoemulsification is a minimally invasive surgery that is usually performed with topical (drops) or local anesthesia, depending on the case and the degree of patient cooperation. During the immediate postoperative period, the patient may report itching or some mild discomfort that does not prevent rest, and does not require the use of painkillers.
Once the operation has been carried out and after the post-operative check-up, the patient will be able to travel by any means of transport. Exceptionally, if the patient requires any special treatment that could affect this situation, he/she will be informed of this by his/her ophthalmologist.
You should follow the prescribed treatment with eye drops for 15-30 days and avoid any manipulation of the ocular surface during this period. It is advisable to use glasses for risky tasks and even to sleep with a protective capsule for the most restless patients. These measures will be gradually withdrawn during the different check-ups.
You should visit your ophthalmologist for a complete examination to confirm the presence of these cataracts and rule out the possibility that your loss of visual acuity is due to other problems (macular degeneration, refractive changes, etc.) that will have a different solution.
This is a new technological advance that allows us to create the corneal flap using a femtosecond laser, thus avoiding the use of a microkeratome. The precision, quality and centering of the flap are undoubtedly much better.
It is a lens with a dioptric power suitable to compensate for the defect generated by the extraction of the crystalline lens, also taking advantage of the opportunity to compensate for any graduation defect present in the patient prior to surgery. The vast majority of them are made of acrylic material (long-lasting), and there are two large groups:
It is the loss of transparency of the crystalline lens, one of the lenses that forms part of the optical system of the eye. The most frequent is senile cataract, although cataracts can manifest for other reasons.
Refractive surgery includes all surgical procedures aimed at correcting a patient’s refractive defect, whether it be myopia, hyperopia and/or astigmatism, which can act on the different structures of the eye that have refractive capacity and/or by introducing elements with refractive power (intraocular lenses) into the ocular cavity.
Ideally, you should not move during the procedure, which only lasts a few minutes. You can and should stay calm, your eyelids will be held in place to prevent blinking and the laser has an eye-tracking system to follow your eye if it moves and to be able to continue with the treatment. Of course, you will have a few drops of anesthetic eye drops placed so that you do not feel any discomfort.
Most patients with cataracts report initial symptoms of blurred vision and glare in situations of significant light exposure (sunny days, night driving, etc.). As the opacity of the lens progresses, the symptoms become more pronounced and the patient notices a progressive decrease in visual acuity that makes it difficult for them to perform their daily tasks.
This will depend mainly on the intraocular lens implanted. If a monofocal lens is chosen, the patient must wear glasses for close vision (reading, sewing, computer, etc.). If, on the other hand, a multifocal lens is chosen, the patient can dispense with glasses for most everyday tasks, although there may be special situations (low light intensity, intermediate distances, etc.) in which the occasional use of glasses may be necessary.
The most important thing is to assess the needs of each patient in order to select the most appropriate lens for each case and for the patient to be aware of the visual expectations that the implanted lens can offer.
There is a third option, which is monovision, in which one eye is focused on long distances and the other on shorter distances. In these circumstances, the patient does without both near and far vision glasses, although this is a situation that is not always well tolerated and leads to the loss of stereoscopic vision (vision in relief, placement of objects in space), and must therefore be assessed very specifically for each patient.
Like all surgeries, it is not without risks, although the incidence of complications is very low considering the number of interventions of this nature that are performed each year throughout the world.
If you have any questions, you can write to us using our form. We will be happy to respond as quickly as possible.
