There seems to be no limit to the things people are willing to do to achieve their perfect look. Whether it's injecting their own fat into their buttocks, whitening their teeth and getting implants, or removing strips of scalp and reapplying them to cure baldness. No matter how risky these cosmetic procedures are, there are always people who are willing to pay the price.
Some people are now even undergoing procedures to permanently change the color of their eyes, Science alert reported.
This can be done in a variety of ways - for example, by inserting implants to change the appearance of the iris, iris tattooing or laser depigmentation.
While these procedures can provide the appearance people desire, they also come with a host of risks and complications, one of which is blindness. The iris is the colored ring that surrounds the pupil. It is as intricate as it is beautiful.
It consists of two layers of smooth muscle which we cannot control. These muscles are responsible for contracting and expanding the size of the pupil and iris to control the amount of light that enters the eye. These muscles also protect the sensitive receptor cells in the eye from permanent damage.
The iris also has two pigment layers containing melanin that determine the color of your eyes. There are six main recognised colours: brown, amber, hazel, green, blue and grey.
If you have a lot of pigment in both layers, your eyes will be a darker colour - for example brown, which is the most common eye colour (found in about 80% of the world's population).
If you have less pigment in the front layer, you'll have hazel or green eyes (the rarest colors, found in only 2% of the population). Those who have little or no melanin in the front layer will have blue or gray eyes.
Changing eye color - fixing the problem or creating one?
Eye surgeries, especially of the iris, are nothing new. Eye surgeries for cataracts date back to the 5th century BC and eye scar staining has been known for over 2000 years.
Until recent years, surgeries were performed to reconstruct the iris or remove a defect. Now, however, cosmetic procedures to permanently change iris color are becoming more common. Keratopigmentation is an example of one of these procedures. A series of small incisions are made in the cornea (the transparent protective layer of the eyeball) with a needle. Pigments are injected into this layer to permanently change it. This technique dates back thousands of years, and various pigments have been tried, including carbon black.
Similarly, using lasers to remove pigment from the outer layer of the iris can change brown eyes to light blue or gray. Depigmentation procedures are performed by burning away the pigment and the cells that create it using a laser.
This technique can only be used to go from darker to lighter eyes, and will not work for people who want to go in the opposite direction. This is because it is not currently possible to add or apply more melanin to the iris if it is already absent or not very large.
Depigmentation was originally developed to treat ocular dermal melanosis, a condition in which pigment cells do not migrate where they should, resulting in darkening of other parts of the eye (e.g. the white).
This condition may require several cycles of treatment, but is usually permanent, as are cosmetic changes.
As with keratopigmentation, there is a significant risk of infection with laser depigmentation as the outermost layers of the eye are affected.
These procedures can also cause light sensitivity and vision changes - including blindness, corneal thinning and perforation, glaucoma and cataracts. Some patients who have had keratopigmentation procedures have even complained of experiencing eye pain during MRI procedures.
Another procedure that some people use to change the color of their eyes is the insertion of silicone implants into the eyes.
One Instagram model who had this procedure done experienced significant complications that left her with the vision of a 90-year-old woman - she lost 50% of her vision in one eye and 80% in the other. Others have also reported similar complications.
These implants carry a high risk of infection and other complications - such as changing the shape of the eye and the way the fluid in the eye puts pressure on the optic nerve. Because this nerve controls vision, blindness can occur when it is pinched.
There is insufficient evidence to support the use of any of these procedures from a cosmetic point of view. As with many other things that are done for cosmetic reasons, the short-term gain sets you up for potential long-term pain. Even when these procedures are used to treat medical conditions, complications have been reported.
A long-standing and safe way to change eye color remains the use of prescription colored contact lenses. | BGNES
