Down in the dumps? Stuck in a rut? It might be because your eyes aren’t white enough, making you unattractive and unlovable. Luckily, there’s a serious medical procedure to fix this; ABC reports on the growing popularity of eye-whitening surgery. It costs $3,000 to $5,000 (that’s per eye), possible side effects include dry eyes, scarring, and infection, and it’s almost as effective as using eye drops:
As a lawyer Steven Smith works long hours and reads a lot of fine print. But he blames years of sun exposure for making his eyes red.
It irritates him when people tell him how tired he looks. So when his ophthalmologist, Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler, described the new eye-whitening procedure called I-BRITE, Smith decided to give it a try. I-BRITE is basically a procedure called conjunctivoplasty, a procedure that’s been around for decades. Surgeons use this to remove pterygium, or growths in the eyes.
But taking away healthy normal eye tissue purely for cosmetic reasons concern some eye surgeons. They say that tissue is in your eyes for a reason.
“The blood vessels really need to be there,” said ophthalmologist Dr. Allen Berg. “They supply oxygen to the underlying surfaces to the eye.”
