SAN ANTONIO — It's an eye-popping cosmetic surgery procedure that involves changing the color of your eyes and it's been surging in popularity.
There is more than meets the eye with this invasive procedure with a laundry list of dangers.
Dr. Gregory Parkhurst, the CEO of Parkhurst NuVision told KENS 5, “Tattooing is not a good idea. Just to be direct right up front. You know, the cornea and the eye is a living structure. It's a living tissue and it doesn't want to have pigmentation in it.”
Here’s how this eye-opening procedure works.
The tattoo artist will use a small needle to inject dye into the eye. The ideal location is the bulbar conjunctiva which is a transparent layer that covers most of the eye. The needle then applies the dye into the while part of the eye, called the sclera.
But if you follow through with this procedure you could end up with a real eyesore.
“The window in the surface of the eye is see through and needs to be clear. So if you get scarring or inflammation in that area, you could really go blind from it," Parkhurst said.
WebMD says some of the most common dangers of eye tattooing are infection, inflammation, loss of vision or even the loss of an entire eye. But there are very rare cases where this surgery is medically indicated.
“There's been some examples of severe trauma to the eye where some of the iris has been missing. Like some vague injury from a car accident or something like that," Parkhurst said.
So what are some safer alternatives?
"There's a variety of different ways for people to have cosmetic color change to their eye. Colored contact lenses are one example and some of those are actually FDA approved. So if they're prescribed by a doctor and monitored by a doctor, those can be perfectly safe. Sometimes the ones you get from the gas station, not so much. So kind of be careful where you get them. Some are FDA approved and some are not," Parkhurst said.
You can find Dr. Parkhurst's new book, "New Vision: Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Lasik Surgery," on Amazon, where he dives into the benefits of Lasik and why it isn't as scary as many people think.