An eye doctor’s review of “The Eye” movie with Jessica Alba

Looks like Jessica Alba is in a movie about a possesed corneal transplant. See if you can notice any ocular inconsistancies in this trailer! Here are the ones I found!!

Problem 1. Unrealistic visual expectations
The dialogue, and Ms. Alba’s proficiency with her walking cane, seem to indicate that she’s been blind since birth, or at least, a very young age.

On inspection, her visual problem seems to be mostly corneal, with stromal haziness from limbus to limbus. This could be a hereditary condition like CHED or diffuse scleral cornea. She could also have congenital glaucoma (doesn’t look buphthalmic), Peter’s anomaly, or a chemical burn (though her skin around the eyes look immaculate).

No matter the cause, I think the supposition that she lost vision in both eyes at a young age seems reasonable. Thus, her ophthalmologist SHOULDN’T have promised such visual improvements. Who knows what kind of retinal problems or amblyopia she might have behind those cloudy corneas. And why did she not have this surgery at a younger age? Under promise and over deliver … that’s my motto!

Problem 2: Poor surgical technique
At one point in the trailer they show a microscopic video of her eye after surgery. As you can see in this picture, the surgeon chose to use an enormous white-colored running suture:

Certainly not standard of care, and prone to leakage, astigmatism, and … looking bad. This “Star of David” suture technique seems to have worked flawlessly, however, as you can see in this later scene the stitch has disappeared completely without any residual scaring or inflammation:

Problem 3: Eye protection
Ms. Alba should have been instructed to wear eye protection at all times, especially since she seems to have had BOTH eyes operated on at the same time (who does that!). In this scene, exploding shards of glass are shooting toward her unprotected eyes!

I haven’t seen such a blatant disregard for ocular safety in a movie trailer since Superman blocked that bullet with his cornea:

Summary:
A movie hasn’t generated so much buzz in the ocular community since Tom Cruise received his back alley eye transplant in Minority Report. Unfortunately, Ms. Alba is suffering from an extremely aggressive form of graft rejection/failure, complicated by steroid-induced visual hallucinations. Given her propensity for psychic resonance, I think her next eye surgery should be a keratoprosthesis.