Bleb incarceration following Ahmed valve surgery

Globe luxation is a painful and potentially vision-threatening condition in which the globe becomes trapped behind the eyelids requiring physician intervention in the emergency department or eye clinic. On presentation, the patient typically complains of an inability to close their eye, severe foreign body sensation, decreased vision, and significant eye pain. Although most visual symptoms are reversible and primarily result from exposure keratopathy, optic nerve damage, and permanent vision loss can occur from repeat or prolonged episodes of globe luxation. Risk factors include any congenital or acquired conditions that displace the globe anteriorly in the orbit and increased eyelid laxity that allows the globe to prolapse through the lid aperture. Typically, the precipitating event involves eyelid retraction during ophthalmic examination or an event that increases intraorbital pressure such as coughing or sneezing. Once the globe has luxated, the condition is typically worsened by blepharospasm and patients’ attempts to close the eye that worsen the entrapment. In the current case, the patient had a large superotemporal filtering bleb following Ahmed valve surgery for uncontrolled glaucoma. While instilling her glaucoma medication, she retracted her eyelids sufficiently to pull the upper lid over her filtering bleb where it became entrapped causing a similar presentation to globe luxation. Traditional methods of repositioning the globe were unsuccessful. Bleb needling was ultimately required to return the globe to a normal position.