I’ve been left virtually blind after £3,000 eye surgery at Optical Express
A WOMAN is taking legal action against Optical Express over lens replacement surgery that left her virtually blind in one eye.
She also alleges that the high street optician pressured her to pay for a second £3,300 operation on the other eye – even though there was nothing wrong with it.
Scientific research consultant Sam Begum, from Glasgow, has instructed lawyers to sue the firm, which performs thousands of eye surgeries every year.
She is one of a string of patients who are claiming compensation for what they believe are botched procedures.
Ms Begum said: ‘You trust the experts to look after you. I was paying for treatment and believed I would have the best care.
‘But it has been a disaster. After what I have been through, I wouldn’t recommend my worst enemy to go to them.’
Around 250,000 eye surgery operations are now performed by private companies every year in the UK, with Optical Express the biggest provider.
Some surgery is performed to correct long or short-sightedness, so that a patient no longer needs glasses or contact lenses. Other operations can be done to correct other defects, such as cataracts.
The Royal College of Ophthalmologists claims that 95 per cent of people who have had such surgery are happy with the results – but campaign groups say that up to 40 per cent experience unexpected difficulties after surgery.
Ms Begum said her problems began 14 months ago, when she accompanied a relative to an appointment at a branch of Optical Express. Accepting the offer of a free consultation, she was told that she had cataracts in both eyes.
Experienced as a clouding of the vision, cataracts are the most common cause of sight loss among people over 40. After some loss of vision in her left eye, in January last year Optical Express told her the cataracts were responsible and advised lens replacement surgery in both eyes – at £3,300 per eye.
Weeks later, she arrived at the firm’s clinic in St Vincent Street, Glasgow, undergoing lens replacement surgery in her left eye.
But within days it was clear something had gone badly wrong – her vision remained blurred.
Returning to Optical Express, she was stunned to be told her retina had in fact detached and she needed emergency surgery. She said: ‘I suffered the worst night of my life – I feared I was going blind.’
Optical Express paid for an emergency operation to her retina at the private Nuffield Hospital.
Despite the devastating outcome of the first operation, Optical Express called her to ask when she would like to have the lens in her right eye replaced.
She said: ‘It was unbelievable.’ Ms Begum sought expert advice from a different optician.
In December she was shocked to learn after a scan at Vision Express that her right eye was healthy and did not require any treatment.
Ms Begum’s sight in her left eye is now severely limited and she states she suffers from tunnel vision as well as blurry, unstable and distorted sight, with glare, starbursts, halos and double vision. The lens in her right eye, which
Optical Express wanted to replace, she describes as ‘crystal clear’.
She has now instructed law firm Friends Legal to sue. It is handling dozens of similar cases, the majority against Optical Express.
The law firm is tackling the elective refractive eye surgery industry as a whole, saying it requires stronger regulation. Its clients complain of problems including laser eye surgery failing, lens replacement operations not delivering the promised results and faulty lenses being implanted.
Ms Begum said: ‘Some people are scared to go to court but I am angry. I have the proof I didn’t need an operation on my right eye and I want them to have to explain why they told me I did.’
Tony O’Malley of Friends Legal said: ‘The refractive eye surgery industry has been allowed to selfregulate and a number of our clients have been ill-advised to have operations with risks not fully explained and poor aftercare.’
In 2014, Stephanie Holloway, from Hampshire, was awarded more than £500,000 in damages after a judge ruled that Optical Express had failed to warn her about the risks of laser eye surgery.
She was said to have been left with hazy vision and light sensitivity and had to live by candlelight.
Optical Express was contacted by phone and email last week and the week before but offered no comment, even after Ms Begum sent a signed mandate giving permission for her file to be discussed.
‘I suffered the worst night of my life’