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Experts have warned against an iris colour-changing procedure going viral on social media, saying it can result in blindness.
The process, known as keratopigmentation, involves using a laser to create a tunnel in the superficial cornea in order to place pigment, the New York Post reports. It is not approved for cosmetic use.
Just last week, French company New Colour, experts in keratopigmentation, shared footage of one patient who changed her brown eyes to a stark, vibrant blue in a clip scoring 16 million views on TikTok.
Most viewers were gobsmacked by the surgery, likening the after-appearance to a look that could simply be achieved using coloured contacts. Others actually bashed the woman’s new iris colour as “horrible”.
“Why would anyone want blue eyes,” one person questioned.
“I have blue eyes and I can’t even see when the sun is out! My kids all have brown eyes and they be seeing everything.”
“JUST WHY???” another wrote.
“I wonder how that affects the eye with time,” someone else said.
For one model, it actually cost her her precious vision.
Nadinne Bruna travelled to Colombia to change her hazel eyes to a bright grey, undergoing a different procedure that uses a silicone implant – only to lose 80 per cent of her vision in her right eye and 50 per cent in her left.
“Before this surgery, my eyes were completely healthy. They were in really good condition. I was naive,” she said in 2018, according to Heathline.
Dr Colin McCannel, a professor of clinical ophthalmology at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Healthline that it’s a “bad idea” to pursue “any unnecessary eye surgery” due to the risk of complications.
The complications of keratopigmentation – which is not approved by America’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – include vision loss, blindness, glaucoma and uveitis, or eye inflammation.
“One of the main issues is that we don’t know enough about the procedure to say whether or not it will cause problems like glaucoma down the line,” Dr Ivan Schwab, a clinical spokesman for the American Academy of Opthalmology, told Vision Centre.