Mike Murphy's Blog

My opticians called to ask me in for an assessment. They know I work with lasers so they thought it might be wise…

Lo and behold, she found a spot of damage in the lower left of my left eye – you can see the lighter patch near on the edge of my retina, above. She was quite sure it was depigmented following an exposure to laser energy.

I then remembered that I had had such an exposure a few months previously when I wore a pair of safety glasses while running a QS Nd:YAG laser.

Unfortunately, these particular glasses only protected me from the fundamental 1064nm wavelength, but not the 532nm wavelength. I forgot this and proceeded to fire the 532nm beam at an energy meter.

The flash was extremely intense and I realised immediately my mistake, and stopped.

However, it appears that a sufficient amount of that energy entered my eye and damaged the highly pigmented region of my retina (as seen above).

It just goes to show, nobody is immune to mistakes! Fortunately, this incident did not damage my macula or fovea, so there’s no difference in my acute vision. But I was lucky!! It could just as easily have damaged those too…

Be safe out there,

Mike.

PS – our next MasterClass is in Luton in September. You can attend either one or two days – it’s up to you. Contact us on dermalasemasterclass@gmail.com for more details.