Is an eye ache normal after YAG laser capsulotomy?

What's normal

The procedure itself is not painful, since the eye is numbed and nothing is cut. Some people feel mild surface irritation or grittiness for a few hours from the numbing drops and from the contact lens used to aim the laser. A dull, mild awareness of the eye on the day of treatment is common and generally settles without anything beyond your prescribed drops.

Eye pressure is the reason ophthalmologists take aching seriously after this laser. The AAO's clinical guidance reports that pressure rises by more than 10 mmHg in roughly 15 to 67 percent of eyes and is usually transient, which is why a pressure-lowering drop such as brimonidine, apraclonidine, or a beta blocker is commonly given right after treatment and pressure is rechecked at 1 to 4 hours, then about a week, a month, three months, and six months.

Mild surface irritation usually fades within a day; pressure-related ache most often shows up in the first hours after the laser.

When it stops being normal

Call your ophthalmologist promptly for a deep ache or brow pain, an eye that feels hard or pressured, pain with nausea or vomiting, halos around lights with pain, or pain that is getting worse rather than better. That combination is the classic picture of high eye pressure and it is treatable, but not something to wait out overnight.

People with glaucoma need a lower threshold to call. An AAO review of one retrospective series of glaucoma patients after YAG capsulotomy found pressure rises or added glaucoma treatment in about 20 percent by 6 months, about 38 percent by 12 months, and about 52 percent by 36 months, with the authors recommending close monitoring for the first two years.