Early detection of cataracts can prevent major limitations on the quality of life, but often people don’t even realize they have developed cataracts. New technologies have made this into a relatively simple and life changing procedure.
Many people are dependent on glasses or contact lenses their whole lives and people don’t realize that cataract surgery is not only about removing the cataract but it’s also about what lens we put in so we can make you independent of glasses which is something that i think people don’t fathom initially when they hear cataracts they kind of just think of the bad
Parts of having to get their eyes operated on but nowadays we’re doing cataract at an earlier stage than we used to 20 30 years ago because now we have all that technology it’s super fast we do it under topical anesthesia the recovery is very quick on post-op day one people are reading all the way down the charts something they weren’t able to do even in their
Youth without glasses and so everyone is thrilled it’s really a very rewarding surgery if everyone lived to 100 we would all get cataracts at some point in our life there are some factors that accelerate cataract development so things like prior trauma prior surgeries such as retina surgery diabetes and oftentimes when patients have had prior trauma they
Think that their vision is doomed for life quote unquote this is my bad eye and i’m not going to be able to see out of it but oftentimes it’s something like a cataract that’s extremely correctable and very good outcomes and i’d love to reinforce that to people that get it checked out because if it’s something correctable we would love to help so everyone is
Born with a lens in their eye just like a camera has a lens and that is clear when you’re born and with age it naturally gets white or opaque and so when we do cataract surgery we take that kind of opaque lens out and we do want to replace it because you do need a lens in your eye to focus light and focus images onto your retina and the parts of your eye that
Process images so folks come in with all sorts of complaints that indicate that they have cataracts one of the most common ones is glare with driving at night and then patients notice that their glasses prescription is changing at an accelerated rate and they’re becoming increasingly nearsighted with time or they may just get it noted on a routine evaluation that
Hey you have cataracts and then we do extensive testing on patients beforehand and we have iol master which measures the eye and picks with very high precision what lens that patient needs to see really well you can have lenses just to see farsighted in which case you would need reading glasses for up close you can have lenses for the opposite and you want to
Be nearsighted and nowadays we have even more advanced lenses that give you both distance end up close there’s toric lenses to correct astigmatism not all eyes are candidates for these special lenses but the optics are so advanced nowadays that there are lenses that can really be catered to each patient and most of them are made of acrylic they’re tiny lenses
That are foldable so that you don’t have to make a huge incision in the eye you just make a two millimeter microscopic incision the lens is folded you kind of slide it through that little incision and then it opens in the eye and you don’t have to put any stitches because it’s such a tiny incision it just seals on its own and those are some of the advances in
Cataract surgery nowadays no stitches no sutures everything steals on its own pretty immediate recovery and hopefully get you out of glasses patients love it hi i’m shirley med and i’m regina mitchell for more videos like this subscribe to why you
Transcribed from video
Cataract surgery: New improvements and technologies – You Oughta Know (2022) By WHYY
