After receiving an intravitreal injection, it’s normal to have questions about what you may experience and how to care for your eye afterward. In this video, I’ll walk you through what to expect following your injection, what symptoms are normal during the recovery period, and when you should contact us. These simple care instructions are designed to help keep you comfortable and support a smooth recovery.
Hello, I’m Dr. Stuart Burgess from the Fort Lauderdale Eye Institute, and I’d like to walk you through some important care instructions to make your intravitreal injection more successful and more comfortable.
Following these guidelines should help with a successful recovery process.
It is very normal to experience scratchiness and irritation the day following the injection, and even the following day. You can use artificial tears. A lot of people like them refrigerated, as that adds a little more comfort. Even a cold compress with the eye closed can be soothing.
It’s very normal to have some floaters the day of an injection, or even the following day. They typically go away fairly rapidly. So don’t worry if you’re getting some black spots in your vision on that day or two.
Where the injection is given can cause some bleeding, and there can be a red splotch on the surface of the eye that can grow over the next day and can even last up to a week or two. We don’t worry about that. That’s just a little bit of bleeding on the eye surface, kind of like a black and blue mark.
Regarding your prescribed eye medications, you can use them as long as you’ve got a nice clean bottle at home. We want the eye to be clean, so we recommend no swimming the day of an injection and the following day, and also no other somewhat dirty activities such as fishing or gardening.
What I just described is fairly normal, but if you’re starting to notice increasing pain, increasing discharge, decreased vision, or anything like that, that is not normal.
There is always a doctor on call. Feel free to reach out and call us.
