Is blurry vision normal after an eye injection?

What's normal

Right after the injection the eye surface is coated with povidone-iodine and lubricating gel, it is watering, and it has often been dilated for the exam. All of that blurs and dims vision without anything being wrong inside the eye. You may also see the medicine and any air bubble drifting across your view. The AAO says you may have eye irritation for a few hours, and the NEI notes that floating air bubbles typically settle in a day or two.

It is also worth setting expectations about the medicine. The NEI is explicit that injections do not change your vision right away. If your vision was blurry from swelling or leaking before the injection, it does not clear up that afternoon. Any improvement from the drug comes gradually over the weeks between visits, and for many people the goal is holding vision steady rather than making it sharper.

The normal pattern is smeary right after, better by that evening or the next morning, and back to your usual baseline within about a day.

Usually smeary for a few hours, back to your baseline within about a day. Vision that declines over days is a red flag, not part of recovery.

When it stops being normal

Vision that is worse than your baseline and getting worse, especially with increasing pain and light sensitivity in the first week, is the pattern that needs an immediate call. The ASRS lists decreased vision among the symptoms that should prompt you to contact your retina specialist, and the AAO tells ophthalmologists to instruct patients to promptly report reduced vision. In one published series of infections after anti-VEGF injections the median time from injection to the patient presenting was 4 days, range 1 to 18 days, so this is a first-week issue.

A new dark shadow, a gray curtain across part of your vision, or a sudden shower of floaters and flashes points instead toward a retinal tear or detachment, which the AAO says has to be examined by an ophthalmologist right away.