Cataracts - Is Your World Getting Foggy?

Cataracts in the eye are usually the result of the natural aging process of the lens inside your eye. The lens of your eye sits behind the iris (the coloured part). It helps to refract light to be focused on the retina. The lens supplies about one third of the overall power of the eye. When you wish to focus the eye on a close object, the lens changes shape to reach the required power. This change is called accommodation. It is similar to focusing a camera by adjusting the lenses.

As you age, the lens grows larger by adding layers like an onion and it gets less flexible. This makes it more difficult to focus on close objects. This is called presbyopia. After more time, the lens starts to lose its transparency. It is clinically relevant when it reduces what you can see on the chart.

They usually occur in both eyes, but often one eye is worse than the other. There are various cataract types , such as Nuclear, Cortical, Congenital and Senile. They have some of the same symptoms and some that vary.

The main problem they present is to make your vision blurry. Your spectacle prescription may change regularly until it reaches a point where glasses don't really improve your vision enough.

Then it is time to consider surgery to have the opacity removed. It is replaced with a plastic lens inside the eye. The great thing is that not only does the surgery take away the cloudy lens, they can choose the strength of the replacement lens to minimise your distance prescription after the surgery.

Surgery is very straightforward these days. It is a day-surgery or outpatient procedure in most cases. And you see better immediately.

If you would rather put it off as long as possible, see my prevention page to find out what you can do to prevent getting this condition or delay its onset.