Cataracts to be Treated Very Carefully
What are cataracts, and how are they diagnosed and treated, especially non-surgically?
A cataract is a clouding of the lens of the eye. To fully understand cataracts, it is important to understand the eye's anatomy.
The eye has several major structures: The outermost structure is the cornea, which is like the crystal on a watch. It is clear and protects the inner structures of the eye.
The iris, which is behind the cornea, is the colored part of the eye, and it regulates the amount of light getting into the eye. Just behind the iris is the lens. This is like the lens on a camera, helping to focus the light entering the eye onto the retina.
The retina lines the inside of the eye like film in a camera.
For a person to see well, all of these structures must be healthy.
Symptoms :
The symptoms of cataracts include blurry vision, difficulty seeing well enough to read and drive, seeing a great deal of glare and halos.
An ophthalmologist can diagnose cataracts during an eye examination.
Factors that increase a person's risk for developing cataracts include :
Age, a family history, smoking, diabetes mellitus, injury to the eye, chronic steroid use, radiation therapy near the eye and certain eye diseases.
Lens Implant :
One way to understand exactly what cataracts are is to compare the lens of the eye to a camera lens. If a camera lens were dirty or hazy, it would not take a clear a picture. The camera repair shop would remove the lens and put a new one in its place. This is similar to how cataracts are repaired. The eye's lens is surgically removed and replaced with a new, clear lens, called a lens implant.
Cataract Surgery :
In the early stages of cataract development, vision may not suffer significantly and cataract surgery is not necessary. Often as cataracts develop, changing the person's glasses prescription is all that is needed for good vision.
Cataract surgery is indicated only when the lens clouds so much that a person has difficulty reading or driving.
If you are told that you need cataract surgery but your vision is fine, be a little cautious and, perhaps, seek a second opinion.
Additionally, there is no such thing as emergency or urgent cataract surgery, so if a doctor tells you that you need surgery at once, you may want to get a second opinion, as well.
Surgery is the treatment for cataracts when they become significant. Maximizing glasses can help in the early stages; however, the use of vitamin and nutritional supplements and "cataract eye drops" has not been thoroughly studied, and none of those treatments seem to help very much.
The surgery has come a long way from the days when a patient was hospitalized for as long as two weeks. Today, it is performed on an outpatient basis, in an ambulatory surgery center. Preparing for the surgery takes most of the time. The patient receives multiple sets of eye drops, the eye is cleansed and the patient is given an IV.
The surgery is done while the patient is awake, but he or she may be mildly sedated with what is known as "twilight anesthesia." There should be no pain, and the operation takes about ten minutes. Shortly after the operation, the patient is able to go home.
Cataract surgery is the most commonly performed operation in the U.S.; however, complications, such as infection, can occur.
Even though they're rare, complications do happen, so surgery should be done only when a person's vision is significantly impaired. As the old saying goes: if it's not broken, don't fix it.
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Filed under Cataract Surgery, Eye Treatment
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