Changing eye color, from dark to light, or vice versa, has gone from being a dream for some to becoming a reality thanks to various available techniques, an aesthetic desire that has gone viral on social networks but that the Spanish Society of Ophthalmology (SEO) advises against it due to the irreversible consequences it may have for vision.
One of the techniques is keratopigmentation, which a famous influencer has possibly used these days, and which consists of introducing a pigment that stains the cornea by means of the so-called femtosecond laser -also used in other eye surgeries- to achieve the desired hue.
The SEO warns how patients undergoing this intervention have suffered corneal decompensation that has led to the loss of its transparency. “I have seen some cases of young people with significant bilateral corneal decompensation, caused by tattooing, who required a corneal transplant,” SEO Vice-Secretary and Ophthalmologist José Antonio Gegúndez told EFE.
Even in the case of not requiring a transplant, the medical director of the EyeCos Clinic in Barcelona and member of the Professional Association of Spanish Ophthalmologists (APOE) Pedro Grimaldos has warned that a possible cataract intervention or retinal operation would not be possible because the cornea needs to be transparent.
“I advise against it for scientific reasons. It is a surgery, you do not work on the iris, the iris does not change color, you work on the cornea where the dye is put in front… The dye covers your visual field, you cannot see through the sides and creates a peripheral visibility problem”, Grimaldos explained to EFE.
In addition, he has warned that the intervention can generate rejection since a foreign body is introduced into the body and the result is not regular or homogeneous. “Keratopigmentation is attractive because of its immediacy”, she lamented, and has considered that on many occasions the risks and future incompatibilities for other surgeries are not explained.
Apart from the damage to vision, the result is superficial and causes what has been called “doll’s eye” or “robot eye”, according to Gegúndez, who recommends that those who want to show off other eye colors use cosmetic contact lenses. occasionally and wait for science to accredit other types of interventions that are safer and more effective.
The doctor and professor of Ophthalmology at the Miguel Hernández University (UMH) of Elche, Jorge Alió, who has defended in a statement that keratopigmentation is a technique endorsed by scientific research of more than ten years and that it is the “most studied and extensively researched”.
The other technique that makes it possible to change the color of the eyes is laser iridoplasty, defended by Dr. Pedro Grimaldos, which promises a “real change” in the color of the iris without going through the operating room, only by discoloring this tissue. Therefore, it would no longer be a question of staining the cornea as in keratopigmentation, but of working directly on the iris until it is lightened, a practice that does not allow choosing the color but rather it would be determined by the genetics of each patient.
Since it began to be applied in 2011, nearly five thousand people have undergone this procedure, detailed Grimaldos, who has guaranteed that he has not seen “long-term chronic complications” and that the results have been published in international journals and books. .
On the contrary, SEO considers that this technique that actually modifies the color of the iris could cause a dispersion of pigment inside the eye that would give rise to glaucoma, which can lead to loss of vision.
