Silicone on Silicone

One of the things that I had always been admonished about in residency was not using silicone containing lens implants in patients that might need retina surgery. When a cataract is removed, we usually replace the natural lens (which we call a cataract when it needs to be removed) with an artificial lens implant. Some of these lens implants are made of silicone. Retina surgery is often done for patients who have retinal detachments. If the retinal detachment is really stubborn, the retina surgeon may need to place silicone oil in the back of the eye behind the lens implant. In some cases, if the silicone oil interacts with the silicone lens implant, the implant can become cloudy. I am not sure how much I had ever personally seen of this cloudiness, but I recently saw a series of photos of this. Wow, they can get really cloudy! I am glad that I was taught about silicone lens implants early on.