Are procedures to permanently change eye color, such as iris implants, iris tattooing, or laser depigmentation, safe?
It seems like there are no limits to what people are willing to do to achieve the perfect look.
Injecting your own fat into your buttocks, shaving your teeth to insert implants, or removing and reinserting strips of skin from your head to treat baldness… No matter how risky these cosmetic procedures are, there are always people willing to pay the price.
Some people even undergo procedures to permanently change the color of their eyes.
This can be done in several ways, such as with implants to change the appearance of the iris, iris tattooing, or laser depigmentation.
While these procedures can give you the look you want, they come with a number of risks and complications—blindness being one of them.
The iris is the colored ring that surrounds the pupil. And it is as complex as it is beautiful.
This structure is made up of two layers of smooth muscle (over which we have no control). These muscles are responsible for contracting and expanding the size of the pupil and iris to control the amount of light entering the eye.
These muscles also protect the sensitive receptor cells inside the eye from permanent damage.
The iris also has two pigmented layers that contain melanin, which determines eye color. There are six primary colors: brown, amber, tan, green, blue, and gray.
If both layers are rich in pigment, your eyes will be a darker color, such as brown, which is the most common eye color (it appears in about 80% of the world’s population).
If you have less pigment in the front layer, you will have brown or green eyes (the rarest colors, present in only 2% of the population).
Those with little or no melanin in the front layer will have blue or gray eyes.
Solve a problem?
Eye surgeries, especially iris surgeries, are nothing new. Cataract eye surgeries date back to the 5th century BC. Scars that give eyes a new color have been around for over 2,000 years.
Until recently, these procedures were performed to reconstruct the iris or repair a defect in this structure.
But cosmetic procedures to permanently change the color of the iris have become more common.
Keratopigmentation is one of these methods. In it, small incisions are made with a needle in the cornea (the transparent protective layer of the eyeball).
Pigments are inserted into the layer to permanently alter it. This technique dates back thousands of years, with a variety of pigments tested, including black.
Similarly, using a laser to remove pigment from the outer layer of the iris can change eyes from brown to blue or gray.
Depigmentation procedures do this by burning, with a laser, the pigment and the cells that produce this color.
This technique can only be used to change darker tones to lighter ones, not vice versa.
This is because it is currently not possible to add or deposit more melanin into the iris if it is already absent or if this substance is scarce.
The depigmentation technique was originally developed to treat ocular cutaneous melanosis, a condition in which pigment cells do not migrate where they should be, causing other parts of the eye (such as the whites) to darken.
This condition may require several treatment sessions, but is usually permanent, just like the cosmetic change.
Both laser keratopigmentation and laser depigmentation carry a significant risk of infection, as they compromise the outer layers of the eye.
These procedures can also cause sensitivity to light and vision changes, including blindness, thinning and perforation of the cornea, glaucoma, and cataracts.
Some patients undergoing keratopigmentation procedures have even complained of eye pain during MRI procedures.
Another procedure used to change eye color is the insertion of silicone implants into the eyes.
A model announced on Instagram that she had undergone this procedure and had significant complications, leaving her with the vision of a 90-year-old. She lost 50% of her vision in one eye and 80% in the other. Others have also reported similar complications.
These implants carry a high risk of infection and other complications, such as changing the shape of the eye and changing the pressure of the fluid inside the eye on the optic nerve. Because this nerve controls vision, if it is compressed too much, blindness can occur.
There is not enough evidence to support the cosmetic use of any of these procedures. As with so many things done for cosmetic reasons, short-term gain can lead to long-term loss.
Even when these procedures are used to treat medical conditions, complications have been reported.
If you’re thinking about undergoing one of these procedures, ask yourself if it’s worth the risk of going blind just because you don’t like the color of your eyes.
A safe and well-known way to change the color of your eyes is to wear colored contact lenses.
*Adam Taylor is Professor and Director of the Clinical Anatomy Learning Centre at Lancaster University, UK.
**This article was originally published on the academic news site The Conversation and is republished under a Creative Commons license. Read Here the original English version.
Source: Terra
Ben Stock is a lifestyle journalist and author at Gossipify. He writes about topics such as health, wellness, travel, food and home decor. He provides practical advice and inspiration to improve well-being, keeps readers up to date with latest lifestyle news and trends, known for his engaging writing style, in-depth analysis and unique perspectives.
