I am an 86 year old male with wet macular degeneration. I had heart surgery in 2011 and have been taking blood thinners ever since. In 2013 I got a big bleed in my eye that caused my eyesight to deteriorate. Is there a connection between that bleeding and my medications?
sjors (85)
Joris Bartstra, journalist with medical diploma
Yes. Wet macular degeneration creates new, weak, poor-quality blood vessels in the eye that can easily bleed. Such bleeding can seriously affect vision. Anticoagulants (or blood thinners) increase the risk of such bleeding in patients with wet macular degeneration by up to ten times.
The importance of anticoagulants after heart surgery varies from surgery to surgery. Anticoagulants should prevent blood clots from forming in the heart. Those clots can break loose and cause a stroke. In some bypasses (bypass surgery), anticoagulants are not so important, in some prosthetic valves they are very important.
As a patient, it is best to consider whether or not to take anticoagulants together with the cardiologist and the ophthalmologist. The cardiologist must be able to estimate the risk of stroke; the ophthalmologist must be able to estimate the risk to the eyes. Unfortunately, it happens that specialists leave it a bit to each other. The GP should be on top of it, so that the right decision is made.
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