What are cataracts?
One of the most important reasons for consultation in an ophthalmology clinic is related to cataracts. Cataracts are one of the most common eye diseases and still the most frequent cause of reversible blindness worldwide. And many people ask us, what are cataracts? Cataract is the opacification of the crystalline lens. The crystalline lens is a lens inside the eye that allows us to focus images on the retina. This crystalline lens has a series of characteristics that, over the years, it loses its ability to focus. This focusing ability, after the age of 45, begins to deteriorate and this is what gives rise to presbyopia, or eyestrain. And, also over the years, it loses this characteristic of transparency, it becomes more opaque and that is what causes cataract. The only way to solve the cataract is by means of a surgical treatment. But it is a surgical treatment in which, nowadays, the level of success is very high. In such a way that it has become a very safe surgery, very fast and that, of course, provides magnificent results to our patients. And from an ophthalmological point of view, we advise that it should be performed as soon as the cataract is diagnosed. There used to be a saying that you had to wait for cataracts to make a person blind; today that would be absolutely nonsense. In other words, cataracts should be operated from the moment they are diagnosed so that the quality of life and the quality of vision of that person does not deteriorate.
What are the symptoms of cataracts?
When the cataract is very advanced, it can cause blindness in the patient. It is the most frequent cause of reversible blindness. But before reaching this extreme, the patient notices another series of symptoms. The initial symptoms may be dazzling phenomena, there may be alterations in the perception of light and colors, and then, when it is a little more established, the patient begins to notice that he does not recognize people, that he has difficulty in focusing, and his vision begins to be impaired. It is at this moment when we recommend surgery.
How is the surgical treatment of cataracts?
Cataract surgery has evolved dramatically in recent years. I remember when I was starting out, because a cataract operation required general anesthesia, the eye had to be opened practically from side to side to remove the cataract from the inside of the eye, and then the eye had to be sutured, the eye had to be stitched, a bandage had to be put on the patient and the patient had to be admitted for a few days, sometimes even up to a week. Nowadays, the evolution of technology allows us to perform cataract surgery under local anesthesia, simply with anesthetic eye drops. The wound we make is a wound of only 2mm, we no longer have to take the cataract out of the eye, but we fragment it and aspirate it inside the eye and it also allows us a faster recovery. The patient will leave the operating room with acceptable vision, living a practically normal life, without stitches, without bandages, without hospitalization, with a sunglasses and start to live a practically normal life.
What are intraocular lenses?
When we remove the cataract, we are going to replace the space it occupies. The defective crystalline lens that we remove is replaced by an intraocular lens. There are different models of intraocular lenses, but precisely these intraocular lenses have also evolved significantly. In such a way that today we have intraocular lenses that allow us to correct all the prescription defects that the patient has. If a patient has myopia, hyperopia, astigmatism or presbyopia, we can, with that intraocular lens, correct it in such a way that, at the same time that we operate on the cataract, we are going to eliminate the patient’s dependence on glasses. This new generation of multifocal lenses and astigmatism-correcting lenses allows, in this way, to eliminate in the same surgical procedure the two problems: the loss of vision caused by the cataract and the patient’s previous prescription.