Eye surgery with oral valium sedation. No IV. No anesthesiologist. How do patients actually feel?

Since 2000, I’ve been performing all eye surgeries in our surgical center with oral sedation using 10 mg of valium . The cost of this 10 mg valium is less than a nickel per pill.

We don’t use IV sedation.

There is no anesthesiologist or nurse anesthetist in the room.

Let me assure you that the patient experience for eye surgery in our surgical center is almost always positive. Patients having cataract or lens replacement surgery while awake on valium sedation sail through the process and the experience is uniformly positive.

We asked 25 of our patients that had cataract or lens replacement surgery in our ASC the following 3 questions:

BEFORE SURGERY
On a scale of 0-10 where 10 is you are are super nervous/stressed and 0 is you are not stressed at all, how nervous are you about having cataract or lens replacement surgery (before your surgery)?

AFTER SURGERY
On a scale of 0-10 where 10 is your are super nervous/stressed and 0 is you are not stressed at all, how stressful was your surgery?

On a scale of 0-10 where 10 is you experienced a lot of pain during surgery and zero is you experienced no pain at all, how painful was your surgery?

The average stress score before surgery was 3.24/10.

The average stress score during/after surgery was 1.6/10.

The average pain score during surgery was 0.78/10.

Conclusions:
So, fear not. The patient experience for eye surgery with valium is consistently positive. We wouldn’t have been doing eye surgery in this method for this long if our patients’ experience wasn’t consistently great.

Hopefully this video gives you some assurance that your eye surgery will be comfortable and your experience pleasant. We’ll make sure to take great care of you and promise to do our very best to deliver you exceptional care.