What is cataract surgery?
What is cataract surgery? Cataract surgery is the most commonly performed operation both in the UK but also worldwide.
How the procedure works.
It is an operation where we remove the natural lens of the eye, using keyhole surgery, and replace it with a lens implant that is made out of a biomedical grade plastic. Now, when I say remove the natural lens, what is involved there is that cataract is when the natural lens ages and it loses its transparency and its sharpness, giving foggy, hazy, blurred vision. So we use keyhole surgery, through tiny incisions, to remove the natural lens and leave in place the ligament that holds the natural lens in place.
We then put a plastic lens implant that is made of a biomedical plastic, very high quality, in place, to refocus the eye. The choice of lens implants we have has exploded over the last few years, and we have lens implants that simply correct distance vision, we have lens implants to correct all ranges of vision, and we have lens implants to specifically correct high levels of astigmatism. And the type of lens implant to choose is a really critical aspect of cataract surgery. And to get the best possible outcomes from cataract surgery, it is really important to see a surgeon who specialises in cataract surgery, but also who specialises in the wide range of lens implants that patients can have and can benefit from.