No matter your age (although chances are you’re most likely too old to have your age cavalierly mentioned in a public forum), if you have cataracts, surgery is almost definitely your only treatment option. Nothing else has proven to be effective, and surprisingly, cataract surgery is not difficult or long. Here’s what it entails.
Let’s Review
You already know that a cataract is what has been clouding your vision. Essentially proteins in your eye have banded together over your eye’s lens and that is what is causing the clouding. A cataract surgery will get rid of all of that. But how? They have to just replace your eye, right? Essentially yes, and we’ll get to that soon.
Waiting for New Eyes
Luckily, if you can’t have cataract surgery immediately for whatever reason (other health issues, financing, etc.), waiting will not harm your eye, except in extremely rare cases. Some people don’t even need to have surgery; their cataracts simply do not progress to a debilitating state. However, others wil not be able to see at all, and they will need surgery and want to get it as soon as possible.
Quick and Simple
Cataract surgery is very fast, lasting only an hour at the most. Even better, you will be able to go home the same day. However, as your eyes will have just been operated on, you will not be able to drive yourself home. Luckily, if your vision is already bad enough that you were having cataract surgery, you most likely could not drive yourself to the operation anyway. Have a friend or family member or caretaker come wait for you. You won’t be long.
There are just a few easy steps to the surgery. The doctor prepares your eye by dilating your pupil and numbing the area with local anesthesia. Then he or she removes the lens in your eye. Most often, the lens will be broken up using ultrasound waves and then sucked out of a tiny cut in the cornea, but often the lens is removed whole through a larger incision.
After the cloudy and damaged lens is removed, it is replaced with an artificial one. Clear and new, you will be able to see like you could 20 years ago!
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