Cataract surgery: What to expect

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[Text on screen: The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center
Amit Tandon, MD
Ophthalmologist
Refractive Surgery Division]

Amit Tandon, MD: One of the newer advances in cataract surgery is the advent of advanced technology or premium intraocular lens implants. What a cataract is, is everyone's born with the lens inside their eye. When you're born, that lens is perfectly clear and transparent. When you get a little bit older, that lens, instead of being clear and transparent, becomes kind of yellow and cloudy. Once it becomes yellow and cloudy, we call it a cataract. What cataract surgery is, is going inside the eye to remove that lens that has a cataract in it. Once that lens is removed, we can put a new lens in its position.

Having eye surgery can make people sometimes very nervous. The thought of having someone around the eye, or even worse cutting on their eye can make people very, very nervous, but in reality, it's a very easy process to go through. Cataract surgery in my hands takes somewhere between five and 10 minutes to perform. What we do is we put an IV in your arm, and that IV will give you some sedation to keep you more calm and relaxed throughout the surgery. We'll also give you eye drops that will numb your eyes so you don't have any pain or any discomfort. Next, we put a small eyelet holder that will hold your eye open during the surgery so you don't have to try and hold it open. Finally, and potentially the most important thing is the only thing you'll see the entire surgery is a very bright light from my microscope. You will not see a knife or a needle or anything terrifying coming towards your eye, which is always everyone's biggest fear for cataract surgery. But five to 10 minutes later, you're all finished, and then I see you the following day to make sure you're healing the appropriate way.

The really neat thing about the changes in cataract surgery is these new lenses that we're able to put into the eye can now do things that we couldn't previously do. Some of the things that we can now do is correct astigmatism, just something that some people have had their entire life and have had to wear glasses for their entire life, which we can often eliminate the need for glasses afterwards. Those lens implants can also correct presbyopia. Presbyopia is the need for reading glasses, which happens to most people sometime in their early to mid-40s. The changes that have been made in cataract surgery over the past 20 years have really been sensational, and I'm looking forward to seeing what new changes happen over the next 20 years also.

[Text on screen: The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center]

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