Cataract Surgery and Cataracts - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) About Eye Care

Though both cataracts and cataract treatments are incredibly common, many people are still confused about what cataracts actually are and exactly how they are treated. To date, millions of successful cataract surgeries have been completed in the United States alone and millions more are being performed every year. These eye surgery procedures are an incredibly accessible way to forestall a condition that is still the leading cause of blindness. If a lack of information has kept you from considering cataract surgery, then let us shed some light on cataract treatment by answering some frequently asked questions.

What are cataracts?

Cataracts are a very common eye condition that generally results from normal age-related wear to the eye and its lens. Some diseases may speed the process and some people may be more genetically predisposed to cataracts than others. While most cataracts cause the lens to get cloudy, some merely thicken it. Both forms of cataracts get worse with time and can lead to any number of visual defects from nearsightedness to partial color blindness to an inability to focus and even to complete vision loss.

What surgeries are available to treat cataracts?

All cataract surgeries have the same basic purpose--to replace the effected lens and replace it with an artificial lens--but different cataract surgeries go about it in different ways.

The most common form of cataract surgery is called phacoemulsification. In this procedure, a lasik eye surgeon enters the cornea through a small incision along its perimeter and then manually breaks up and removes the lens. Another form of cataract surgery is the extracapsular procedure; this surgery is more invasive than phacoemulsification because it is designed to accommodate a different kind of lens. The primary difference between extracapsular surgery and phacoemulsification is that the former requires a larger incision and stitches and therefore has a longer recovery period.

At the end of 2009, the FDA approved the use of a femtosecond laser in cataract surgery procedures. Many eye surgeons believe that these laser-assisted operations are the future of cataract surgery.

How successful is cataract surgery?

The age and health of a cataract surgery patient is a big part of the success of their surgery. For example, cataract surgery patients that suffer from other pre-existing eye conditions generally do not have results that are as good as a patient that is treating only cataracts. That said, a large study on cataract surgery patients showed that an overwhelming majority of them (more than 95 percent) attained 20/40 or better vision following their operation.

For more information about laser vision correction or to meet with a Long Island LASIK eye surgeon, it is important to visit our Long Island refractive surgery office.