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Eye Care

What Is a Cataract?

Summary & Participants

When you reach a certain age, it's usually clear that your vision isn't as sharp as it used to be. Learn how surgery for the cloudy lens of a cataract can restore vision.

Medically Reviewed On: June 19, 2008

Webcast Transcript

If it's not treated, the vision really can get so poor that you become legally blind, meaning you see the light, but no images, no detail. Fortunately, in the United States, most people seek care before they get that bad, but that's the potential if they don't care for it.

ANNOUNCER: Over a million cataract operations are performed every year.

PENNY ASBELL, MD: Cataract surgery is one of the most successful surgeries that are done today. The patient comes in goes home the same day, and it's a relatively brief surgery. Certainly, about an hour or maybe even less. Given all of that, really, it can be done in almost any patient at any age when it's appropriate for vision needs. The eye doctor will put drops in the eyes to numb up the surface of the eye. Sometimes we do give an injection near the eye to numb the eye. If that's done, typically you work with an anesthesiologist who will give some sedation medicine so it doesn't bother you. And then the surgery begins.

The eye doctor may ask you to look at a light to keep your eye from moving around too much during the surgery, and we make a tiny little incision in the eye and then start removing the cataract.

ANNOUNCER: The goal of this operation is to replace the defective lens with an artificial substitute.

PENNY ASBELL, MD: What we do is take out all the lens, except we leave part of the capsule behind, because if we're going to take out that lens, we want to replace it with something. And the replacement is an IOL or intraocular lens. It's made out of plastic. It's measured to give the right power, and it's put back in after you take the cataract out.

ANNOUNCER: The procedure may be fairly routine, but naturally there is still a small amount of risk.

PENNY ASBELL, MD: Some of the complications can be serious, such as bleeding, infection, damage to the inside of the eye, the retina, all of which can cause loss of vision. So that's why we don't just do the surgery on everybody who walks in. They have to have a visual complaint in order to consider taking on the risk, albeit a small one but there's still some risk with every surgery, cataract surgery, too.

ANNOUNCER: After the surgery, recovery is brief with relatively few restrictions on an active life.

PENNY ASBELL, MD: The next day, you're going to see your eye doctor to make sure it's beginning to heal, typically then about a week later, and then maybe about a month or so later after that. During that time you're going to be using eye drops, maybe for a week to about a month.

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