Prevention of Postoperative Blindness

Prevention of postoperative blindness is the key to limiting its occurrence because in most

cases of postoperative vision loss, there are no effective treatments. The American Society of Anesthesiologists created a Perioperative Visual Loss Task Force in 2005 to create a practice advisory to prevent postoperative vision loss, especially from anterior and posterior ischemic optic neuropathy. Practice advisories, such as this task force, are not supported by scientific literature, unlike practice standards and guidelines. This task force focused on advisories for prone spinal procedures because of the high-risk nature of these surgeries. The task force articulated that there are no identifiable high-risk patient characteristics. The task force noted that patients are deemed high risk when having spinal surgeries when it is anticipated the surgery will be longer than normal or the surgery is anticipated to have a large amount of blood loss.