Avastin, a chemotherapy drug originally approved as a treatment for various types of metastatic cancer, is made by Genentech Inc. It’s also useful in the treatment of various eye diseases involving an overgrowth of blood vessels in the back of the eye. These floaters can appear like water bubbles to the recipient, and have been known to lead to greater complications in some cases.

Using it to treat eye conditions has been linked to reports of floaters after Avastin injection. According to a New York Times blog post in 2011, some ophthalmologists have become a little more cautious about using Avastin, a less expensive drug used “off-label” for wet macular degeneration, an eye disease usually affecting the elderly.

Floaters after Avastin injection are a minor complication compared with bacterial infections which showed up and caused blindness in several eye patients in Nashville, Miami, and Los Angeles that year.

Twenty-one patients were involved in these three locations and, of those patients, several went completely blind in the treated eye. One of those patients suffered brain damage due to the infection traveling to his brain.

While ophthalmologists would love to be able to use this less expensive drug, there are alternatives. Lucentis, another drug also made by Genentech Inc., is specifically approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of wet macular degeneration and other similar eye issues.

Lucentis costs $2,000 to Avastin’s $50 per treatment, but some doctors fear that using Avastin off-label could expose them to liability for malpractice.

What are Vitreous Floaters After Avastin Injection?

The vitreous humor is the fluid inside the eye that can hold floaters—disturbances in the vision that appear like bubbles, squiggly lines, spots, or thread-like strands. Floaters can be a common part of aging, but even younger people experience them after staring at something bright in their field of vision.

The floaters after Avastin injection are attributed to silicone oil present on the plunger, barrel, and even needle of the hypodermic used to administer the treatment to the eye.

The problem lies with the fact that Avastin, being a chemotherapy drug, must be prepared by having the dose broken down from a large amount when used for cancer treatment into several small amounts for eye treatment.

This process is done in compounding pharmacies, and the hypodermics used may not be designed for this purpose.

The silicone oil is part and parcel of these needle units, and the longer they sit in storage before being used, the more likely it is that the oil will migrate into the drug itself. Freezing the prepared needles does not seem to do anything to prevent this and, in fact, can accelerate this process.

The small bits of oil in the eye may just be annoying, but they can also lead to corneal damage, increased or decreased pressure in the eye, inflammation, and early cataract formation.

Have you or a loved one experienced floaters after Avastin injection and had your vision health harmed? You may qualify to join a free Avastin eye injection class action investigation.

Do YOU have a legal claim? Fill out the form on this page now for a free, immediate, and confidential case evaluation. The attorneys who work with Top Class Actions will contact you if you qualify to let you know if an individual lawsuit or Avastin silicone injection class action lawsuit is best for you. [In general, Avastin lawsuits are filed individually by each plaintiff and are not class actions.] Hurry — statutes of limitations may apply.

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