What is it?

A cataract is a cloudy eye lens, not a film growth over the eyes. Having a cataract is like looking through an opaque window. The lens in the eye is normally very clear and changes in shape to focus light to a point in the back of your eye. When it becomes clouded up, light cannot easily pierce through the lens, so the image your eye absorbs appears blurry.

	hold your mouse over the photo to see through the eyes with cataracts

What causes it?

Aging is the most common cause of this disease. It begins most often after the age of 55, and by 75 years, almost one out of four people have a cataract. The lens is held in place by a thin bag inside your eye. As people age, the old cells of the lens bag die and build up inside it, clouding the lens. This happens very gradual, but certain factors may induce the process, such as drugs and alcohol, an incident to the eye, poor eating habits, inheritance, and congenital problems. Excess sunlight to the eyes and smoking have been known to put you more at risk in developing a cataract.

Symptoms

Treatment

There is absolutely no way to prevent its development because cataracts occur naturally as aging begins. Wearing sunglasses that protect you from ultraviolet rays, not smoking, and eating healthy are measures you should follow to postpone the growth of cataracts.

People who have cataracts, however, normally use glasses or contacts in its early stages, when the cloudiness is not as obscure. When the cataract becomes intolerable to the patient, surgery is the best option to replace the clouded lens with an implant lens, called an intraocular lens (IOL). Obviously, these implanted lens cannot focus, but they are made so that the patient can choose what type of vision he/she wants-close, far, or both. The most common kind is farsight. The patient will then have to use reading glasses to see clearly up close. Another method the patient can choose is monovision. Monovision describes correcting one eye for far distance vision and the other eye for close up vision, so that glasses or contacts is not necessary. The person will adapt to this method after a while.

The process for this surgery begins when the edges of the cornea is sliced open to allow a very narrow instrument to be inserted into the lens, where ultrasound shatters the lens and gets sucked out, through a technique called phacoemulsification. The implant lens, made of plastic or silicone, is then inserted in place of the old one and the cornea flipped back into shape, where it self heals without stitches because of the the suction involved.

 

Index of Diseases