Scientific research consultant Sam Begum, from Glasgow, is taking legal action against Optical Express over lens replacement surgery that has left her virtually blind in one eye.
Begum has instructed lawyers to sue the firm, which performs thousands of eye surgeries every year alleges that the company pressured her to pay for a second operation on the other eye costing £3,300 - even though there was nothing wrong with it. According to local newspapers Begum is believed to be one of a string of patients who are claiming compensation for what they believe are botched procedures.
Speaking to the Daily Mail Ms Begum said: 'You trust the experts to look after you. I was paying for treatment and believed I would have the best care. But it has been a disaster. After what I have been through, I wouldn't recommend my worst enemy to go to them.'
Ms Begum said her problems began 14 months ago, whilst she was accompanying a relative to an appointment at a branch of Optical Express and after accepting an offer of a free consultation, she was told that she had cataracts in both eyes - the most common cause of sight loss among people over 40. She was advised that the cataracts were causing her to have some loss of vision in her left eye and advised lens replacement surgery in both eyes - at £3,300 per eye - three weeks later she underwent lens replacement surgery in her left eye.
Within days when her vision remained blurry she realised something had gone badly wrong. After Optical Express paid for an emergency operation to her retina and despite the devastating outcome of the first operation, they called her to ask when she would like to have the lens in her right eye replaced.
Ms Begum's sight in her left eye is now severely limited and she states she suffers from tunnel vision as well as blurry, unstable and distorted sight, with glare, starbursts, halos and double vision. The lens in her right eye she describes as 'crystal clear'.
According to reports around 250,000 eye surgery operations are now performed by private companies every year in the UK, with Optical Express being the biggest provider. The Royal College of Ophthalmologists claims that 95 per cent of people who have had such surgery are happy with the results - but campaign groups say that up to 40 per cent experience unexpected difficulties after surgery. Some surgery takes place to correct long or short-sightedness whilst others can be done to correct other defects, such as cataracts.
