Cataract Removal (No Needle, No Stitches)

Cataract Removal (No Nee­dle, No Stitches)

Cataracts are the lead­ing cause of visu­al loss in adults 55 and over. A cataract is a cloud­ing of the nat­ur­al lens inside your eye. This lens, locat­ed behind the iris, works just like the lens of a cam­era — focus­ing light images on the reti­na, which sends images to the brain. The human lens can become so cloud­ed it pre­vents light and images from reach­ing the reti­na. A cataract can be the rea­son sharp objects become blurred, bright col­ors become dull, or see­ing at night is more dif­fi­cult. It may also be why read­ing glass­es or bifo­cals that used to help you no longer seem to be effective.

Cataracts can­not be pre­vent­ed nor can diet or lasers make them go away. Eye injury, cer­tain dis­eases, or even some med­ica­tions can cause cloud­ing, but the major­i­ty of cataracts are sim­ply a result of the nat­ur­al aging process. The best way to treat a cataract is with surgery that removes the old, cloud­ed lens and replaces it with a new, arti­fi­cial one to restore your vision and, in many ways, sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve your qual­i­ty of life.

Cataract surgery is one of the most effec­tive sur­gi­cal pro­ce­dures. The oper­a­tion entails mak­ing a tiny inci­sion in the eye and insert­ing an instru­ment about the size of a pen tip to break up and remove the cloudy lens. Once the cloudy lens is removed, a cataract replace­ment lens or IOL (intraoc­u­lar lens) is insert­ed through the same tiny inci­sion and set into its per­ma­nent posi­tion. It usu­al­ly takes 20 to 30 min­utes or less and most patients are back to their nor­mal activ­i­ties the very next day.