A patient of an eye doctor who’s a regular on ITV’s This Morning show ended up needing a corneal transplant and 80 hospital visits.
Professor Dan Reinstein operated on the show’s host Phillip Schofield.
Carol Vorderman and Lorraine Kelly have also plugged Prof Reinstein after successful ops.
But Dan Peedell, 38, picked up a serious infection after he went to Prof Reinstein for the same laser eye operation he performed on Phil.
Maintenance engineer Dan said his recovery from the Lasik procedure went wrong. He has had eight years of remedial ops and pain.
“This surgery was supposed to improve my life and eyesight but it made it worse,” he said.
“It is very hard watching Dan Reinstein on This Morning talking about how great surgery is when I am suffering daily.
“People need to know there are risks which he seems to gloss over on TV. ”
Dan had £6,300 surgery at Prof Reinstein’s Harley Street London Vision Clinic after rave reviews on the TV show.
Since the private corrective surgery on both eyes in 2012, the NHS has funded thousands of pounds of treatment to save his sight.
Dan, of Witney, Oxfordshire, says he has clocked up 12,000 miles in about 80 hospital visits.
He says his ordeal cost him a previous long-term relationship.
The problem was that an infection in his left eye flared up and after further work by another surgeon to try to fix it, he was referred to an NHS hospital for surgery.
But his condition worsened and he had a cornea transplant.
Seven years on, he says he lives in fear of the cornea being rejected and his sight worsening.
He has limited vision at night and struggles to drive because street lights dazzle him.
He can no longer swim, or play squash and five-a-side football.
He claims he was cut loose by the Harley Street clinic after two years of after-care, despite his complications.
Though his right eye is a success, his left eye has little chance of improving and could get worse.
He must have daily eye drops for life and wears a prescription contact lens in his left eye and glasses, which he didn’t before his op.
He said: “It’s a nightmare and if I had known this could have happened, I would never have gone ahead.
“I have been really depressed. I’ll never listen to celebrity endorsements again – or risk having laser eye surgery.”
Prof Reinstein’s lawyers said Mr Peedell was fully informed of the potential risks of the surgery and confirmed that he understood them before it went ahead.
They said: “Following the surgery, Mr Peedell suffered a fungal keratitis infection, which ended up requiring a corneal transplant.
“This was not a consequence of any negligence on the part of our client and we note that no such allegation has ever been made.
“The corneal transplant was carried out by the NHS and in these circumstances our client cannot make any comment in relation to the number of hospital and clinic visits he made.”
