Cat Chat Feline Forum

my poor little girl Selina is only 7 months old and has been having a lot of trouble with her one eye, it started 2 months ago with inflammation of her eye and after treatment after treatment and eliminating all the causes (there still is no Dx but she has had every blood test and urine samples to eliminate underlying conditions) I went for a follow up today as we have been referred and she has a cataracts in her one eye and also in the same eye her retina has become detached so she is currently blind in her one eye, she can have surgery but only 2 clinics in the UK will do this type of surgery and its a really complicated and big surgery and its not 100 that she will become fully sighted again, not to mention I am based in the midlands and the 1 clinic that does it is in the peak district and the other down south and she doesn't travel well. I was just wondering if anyone had experience with a successful surgery of retina reattachment.

no experience myself, I'm glad to say, but I wonder if you have seen this http://www.veterinaryvision.co.uk/retin ... hment.html

My sweet cat Lola, now at the Rainbow Bridge, suffered from retina detachment in both her eyes.
I realized of that when one night I saw her with her pupils abnormally dilated. Of course it was night and we were home with lights on, but she never had suc dilated pupils, her eyes were nearly completely black. Furthermore she was visibly confused and scared and when she tried to move around the house she bumped into things all over the house.
On the next morning I took her to the vet (eye doctor) who told me the cat had a double retina detachment due to high blood pressure. My cat suffered from CKD so we related her blindness to this issue.
The vet gave me a med to lower my cat's blood pressure, Amlodipine, I gave her the first pill and 20 minutes later my cat was seeing again! Kind of a miracle!

In the following months her blindness came back and went away several times.
Unfortunately we discovered that the cause was diffeent than CKD, an extremely rare disease which were causing, among other serious problems, peaks of high pressure.
The rare disease were successfully treated, but her blindness was still intermittent.
Several other visits with different eye doctors confirmed that her retinas were detached or still in place depending on the moment of the visits.
What is for sure is that even in her blind moments she could still see, and this fact remained unexplained.

Have you assessed the reasons behind her retina detachment? Is she currently taking any med?

Antonio wrote:My sweet cat Lola, now at the Rainbow Bridge, suffered from retina detachment in both her eyes.
I realized of that when one night I saw her with her pupils abnormally dilated. Of course it was night and we were home with lights on, but she never had suc dilated pupils, her eyes were nearly completely black. Furthermore she was visibly confused and scared and when she tried to move around the house she bumped into things all over the house.
On the next morning I took her to the vet (eye doctor) who told me the cat had a double retina detachment due to high blood pressure. My cat suffered from CKD so we related her blindness to this issue.
The vet gave me a med to lower my cat's blood pressure, Amlodipine, I gave her the first pill and 20 minutes later my cat was seeing again! Kind of a miracle!

In the following months her blindness came back and went away several times.
Unfortunately we discovered that the cause was diffeent than CKD, an extremely rare disease which were causing, among other serious problems, peaks of high pressure.
The rare disease were successfully treated, but her blindness was still intermittent.
Several other visits with different eye doctors confirmed that her retinas were detached or still in place depending on the moment of the visits.
What is for sure is that even in her blind moments she could still see, and this fact remained unexplained.

Have you assessed the reasons behind her retina detachment? Is she currently taking any med?

shes had lots of tests to try and find the cause, all her bloods came back normal all her organs are working fine and she had blood tests for toxoplasma and fip as they can cause inflammation of the eyes but all came back negative, its looking like it was a trauma which has caused it (no guarantee though), she was on lots of meds before but now we have figured out the problem (the retina) the referral clinic have said to stop all meds, because there is no underlying condition only surgery can fix it, she was on steroids but they never really helped, me and my boyfriend talked about it and I think we are just going to monitor the eye and if it gets any worse then just have the eye taken out as its not serving its purpose and I don't want to leave her prone to infection because it can become inflamed again and its just going to irritate her, its a shame because she is so young and the referral clinic said it mainly happens in older cats and mostly always has an underlying reason.
#thankgodforinsurance

One of my childhood cats, Cayenne, had two detached retinas when she was 13. She wasn't as active after that, but we kept on including her in things and she carried on for a few more years until she finally passed away of other issues.

I was walking my dog around the same time and we met a couple whose dog also had two detached retinas (he was being walked around the lakes at the time). I don't think it's quite as debilitating for a cat as a human going blind, as they have stronger other senses to compensate, but obviously not ideal. The vet did say they could use lasers at the time (30 years or so ago).