Recent Advances Improve Outcomes for Cataract Patients

Nearly half of the world’s blindness is caused by age-related cataracts. In the United States alone, 5 million people have diminished vision due to cataracts, including over half of those 80 years and older.

Yet cataracts are among the most treatable vision problems. Revolutionary advances in surgery and the development of sophisticated lens replacements have not only restored vision to millions, but have actually improved vision for many by correcting other lens-related defects.

The American Academy of Ophthalmology has designated August as Cataract Awareness Month, and as a part of that effort the physicians of Hattiesburg Eye Clinic want to get the word out about the effects of cataracts on vision and what can be done about it.

“Cataracts are a part of the aging process,” says Dr. Stoney Williamson. “Anyone 50 and over is going to have some form of cataracts that get progressively worse. At what point they may need treatment will depend on how much the cataracts have diminished their daily activity.”

The eye’s natural lens, a transparent structure between the iris and the retina consists mainly of water and protein. Light waves entering the eye pass through the lens and are focused on the retina, a layer of photoreceptor nerve cells at the back of the eye. The retina converts the light rays into electrical impulses that are then transmitted to the brain as sight by way of the optic nerve.

As we age, though, some of the lens’s protein will begin to clump and cause a cloudy area – a cataract – to develop in the lens. As the cataract enlarges, the increased clouding distorts or light passing through the lens. The person’s vision blurs (sometimes resulting in double vision or multiple images), colors fade and night vision becomes poor. In time, the person’s ability to see anything clearly fails altogether.

Surgery to remove the clouded lens has been a standard treatment for decades. In the last twenty years, however, cataract surgery has taken a quantum leap – advances in laser technology and the introduction of the intraocular lens (IOL) have turned the procedure into an outpatient treatment that takes only a few minutes to perform, with a shorter recuperative period and better long-term outcomes.

“I don’t believe I can even remember how to perform cataract surgery as we did when I first entered practice,” says Dr. Williamson, “that’s how much has changed. We’ve seen a 45-minute procedure with an overnight hospital stay and a long recovery period become a ten-minute procedure where the patient goes home the same day and can resume anything but strenuous activity almost immediately.”

The key to current state-of-the-art cataract treatment is the IOL. According to Dr. David Richardson, there are three basic types of these artificial lenses that permanently replace the clouded lens that is removed during surgery. And all of them can correct vision problems associated with the natural lens not related to cataracts.

“The standard IOL can correct far-sighted vision and to some extent near-sighted, but not astigmatism,” says Dr. Richardson. “A toric lens takes it one step further and can correct for astigmatism. The third type, the multi-focal, can correct all of these categories, including intermediate distance vision.”