by English Nurse

Created on: April 03, 2007   Last Updated: April 18, 2007

What is a cataract?

A cataract is basically a clouding of a persons natural lens. this in the majority of cases seen here in the UK is due to age related changes.Other forms of cataract can becaused by a congenital ( birth) defect and also as a result of trauma to the eye, which then goes onto form a cataract and steroid induced cataracts.

What can be done to treat them?

Basically the only way to treat a cataract is by surgically removing it when it becomes a nuisance. Depending on which part of the lens is involved and how dense it is you can live with a cataract for quite some time without it becoming a nuisance to you. Unfortunately alot of people are under the belief that cataracts can be treated by laser, if only this was true!

So what does the operation involve?

Gone are the days when a patient was in hospital for other 10 days, nursed flat and given liquidised food in the hopes of not disturbing the eye and the intra occular lens too much. With the advant of new intra occular lenses and key hole surgery this is now a relatively safe operation to have, thus it can be done before all vision is lost. 20 years ago it was common practise to wait till the cataract had ripened before risking such an operation due to the nature of the surgery and the risk of infection was greater. Due to modern technology it is now becoming increasingly common to do cataract extraction when some one has only minor visual disturbance eg glare from night driving.

The modern day cataract extraction is usually done by a process called phacoemulsivication, or phaco for short. This basically involves a small incision being made about 3 mm in total on the edge of where your cornea ( the window of the eye) joins the sclera ( the white part of you r eye), the surgeon then passes a probe throw your dilated pupil ( the black part of your eye) and breaks up the cataractous lens then aspirates it. Then an intra occular lens is then put into the little bag that your natural lens sat in. In most cases your wound will not be suctured as it is small enough to seal itself

Are there other methods?

If it is a very dense cataract and would not break up using the ultra sound probe used in the phaco method then you might have to have what is called an extra capsular cataract extraction or ECCE for short. This involves a larger incision being made normaly from about 10 o'clock to 2 o'clock if you imagine the cornea to be a clock face.The cataract is then removed in one peice and an intra occular lens is then

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