Enucleation: Problem, Diagnosis and Treatment

What is enucleation?

Enucleation is the medical term used to describe the surgical removal of an eye. Unfortunately, there is a variety of conditions which will not only cause blindness and compromise your pet’s vision but also lead to ongoing pain and discomfort and affect your pet’s quality of life. The most common conditions are:

• Glaucoma
• Trauma and/or proptosis of the eye
• Laceration of the eye (scratch injuries)
• Growths and tumours inside or surrounding the eye(s)
• Severe infection or inflammation
• Complicated and perforated corneal ulcer.

These conditions can affect one or both eyes and an accurate diagnosis of the underlying conditions is important to understand the problem and try to prevent similar problems to the other eye (when one eye is affected).

Enucleation not only alleviates the pain and discomfort, but also by performing further analysis to the eye (histopathology) it allows us to provide you with more information about the underlying condition. Even if your pet doesn’t show obvious signs of pain or discomfort, it doesn’t mean they are not in pain!

Pets can hide their pain very well and some of these signs are being withdrawn, hiding, being less active, being less interested in food and walks and trying to rub or scratch their face or the eye. Enucleation is performed under general anaesthesia and our vets will discuss the risks of the procedure with you prior to the surgery.

Dog enucleation complications

The surgical procedure has a very low complication rate and this is primarily associated with concerns and complications arising from the general anaesthetic or complications caused by an infection of the operated site (surgical wound).

Prognosis of enucleation

Considering to remove one or both of your pet’s eyes can be very frightening and stressful. However, dogs and cats recover very quickly from the procedure and soon regain their ability to navigate. When one eye is removed, dogs and cats will return “back to action” almost instantly as they use their remaining eye to navigate confidently.

In cases where a pet has lost both eyes, the adaptation period is slightly longer (usually a few weeks) but due to their heightened sense of smell and hearing they perform surprisingly well and navigate familiar environments without problem.

Enucleation: Recovery time

Recovery from the procedure usually takes a week and depending on the technique used, there may be some stitches which will need to be removed 7-10 days after the surgery. Usually, your pet will come home to you the same day. The cosmetic outcome is excellent once the hair of the eyelid grows back.