HEALTH SENSE
What is a cataract? By Dr. Katherine Johnson
A
cataract is the clouding of your natural lens. The lens is located behind the pupil and helps to focus light onto the back part of the eye, the retina. As we get older, the lens thickens and will be able to focus less and less. This is the main reason most of us need reading glasses in our 40s or 50s. Eventually, the lens will become hard and yellow, possibly even white, and will change enough that your vision will become blurry and cause glare from bright lights. Glasses cannot the vision loss due to cataracts, because the light is passing through a cloudy lens, like looking through a dirty window. When this occurs, the only way to improve your vision is to have the cataract removed. Unfortunately, this is a natural aging process and no drops or pills will fix it. The good news is that cataract surgery is one of the most successful and lowest risk surgeries we have in modern medicine and with current technology can be almost as accurate as LASIK. The cataract, which is just the cloudy lens, needs to be removed from the eye and replaced with an artificial lens. The artificial lens is acrylic and causes no limitations or problems in the future. Modern cataract surgery is performed by breaking the lens up with an ultrasound and removing it through a tiny incision in the side of the eye. The surgery is usually very fast and typi-
cally done with only local anesthesia and a little relaxing medicine (happy juice). The wound is selfsealing, and the recovery time is often as little as one day. Cataract surgery is performed in a sterile operating room by an ophthalmologist. An ophthalmologist is a doctor specializing in disease and surgery of the eye. There have been some very exciting advances in cataract surgery in recent years, specifically with improvements in the artificial intraocular lens that takes the place of the old cataract lens. This lens will focus the light onto the retina, just like your old lens, but often even better. We can calculate which lens to use and many times can put your glasses prescription inside the new lens. There is an additional option to take extra measurements of the eye during surgery to improve this accuracy and even fix your astigmatism. Recently, new lens technology has allowed us to put trifocal and progressive lenses inside the eye as well to limit your need for reading and computer glasses. These lenses, called multifocal lenses, will give you back as much youthful vision as modern
medicine allows. Imagine not needing glasses for anything anymore! How do you know if you have cataracts? The symptoms of cataracts often develop slowly but include blurry vision, glare from headlights, difficulty seeing in dim lights, shadow images, and trouble reading fine print. Typically, cataracts develop in your 60s or 70s, but some people develop them earlier and others later. If you notice these symptoms, contact an eye doctor, either an optometrist or ophthalmologist, for an evaluation and we can help you decide if you are ready for surgery. The surgery is typically covered by your medical insurance, not vision insurance. The premium multifocal lenses are not covered by insurance and cost extra out of pocket. Cataract surgery is only done once per lifetime, and the lens you choose will last for the rest of your life. Everyone will eventually get a cataract, if we live long enough. The time to take the cataract out is when the symptoms of the cataract bother you enough to have the minor surgery to remove them. Because the surgery is so successful and so low risk, you don’t need to wait until “they are ripe” anymore. Luckily, in Alaska, we have incredible surgeons to help you and offer the very best in modern cataract surgery. Dr. Katherine Johnson, M.D., FACS, is an ophthalmologist at Mountain View Eye Center in Fairbanks.
ALASKA PULSE — January 2020
11
