There are two types of “healing” following your FOV. There is the visual recovery and time it takes the eye to heal. Both are usually short.
After your FOV, you will go home and have a patch on your eye. The patch will be removed the next morning. Your vision will be blurry…
Visual Recovery | When Will Vision Return?
Immediately after the patch is removed, your vision will be blurry. There are several reasons for having blurry vision.
Wearing an eye patch will blur your vision. For simplicity, the patch influences the curvature of your cornea which has tremendous focusing properties of the eye. In fact, your cornea is responsible for about 75% of the focusing power of the eye. Any slight change in the cornea can blur the vision.
Effects from the patch may take several hours to reverse.
Dilating drops also will blur your vision. We use stronger drops to achieve dilation at the operating room than we use in the office for routine dilated exams. The effects from the dilating drops can last over a week in some people.
The patch and drops are the largest factors influencing vision after FOV.
In general, you can expect return of your vision in 3-5 days, but everyone is different.
Healing of the Eye
Once the patch is removed, I’ll recommend the use of an antibiotic drop and a topical steroid. The antibiotic prevents infection and the steroid helps with decreasing inflammation from the surgery (it keeps your eye comfortable).
The antibiotic usually lasts about a week or two depending upon your follow up examination. The outside of the eye recovers quickly, but the dissolvable sutures may take a month or more to dissolve.
In short, your vision should return within a week or so, but the healing of the eye will take weeks, especially if sutures are used