The incidence of cataract is the first of the world’s leading blindness-causing eye diseases, especially the elderly cataract is common. It is a common but serious eye disease that affects vision and is undoubtedly a disease that affects quality of life and impairs mental and physical health. At present, there are more than 7 million elderly cataract patients in China. Medically, according to the process of onset, senile cataract is divided into four periods: the initial stage, immature stage, mature stage and over-ripe stage. Initial stage: Most of them do not affect vision or have “myopia”, so they are not even detected if they are not examined in detail by a specialist; during this period, the use of cataract eye drops such as Salprace, Carlin-U, and Yixian can stop the development of cataract and delay the formation of cataract, which is the best period for drug control.
Immature stage: further clouding of the lens and varying degrees of visual impairment (manifested as progressive vision loss). During this period, the lens cortex absorbs water and swells, pushing the iris forward, which can induce glaucoma attacks and cause more damage to vision. The use of cataract medication at this stage has little effect, so regular review and elective surgery is recommended. It is the best time for ultrasound emulsion surgery.
Mature stage: The lens is completely clouded and vision is obviously affected. Sometimes, only the frontal manual or even only light perception is visible. Drug treatment is mostly ineffective. It is the best time for modern microscopic cataract extraction or ultrasonic cataract extraction with IOL implantation and simple cataract extraction without microscopic surgery.
Overripe stage: The final result of crystal clouding, aqueous analysis and cortical decomposition often leads to crystalline glaucoma and even blindness, and the opportunity to regain sight through surgery is lost. Therefore, if cataract development enters this stage, early surgery should be performed.
There is a saying that “cataracts can only be operated when you can’t see and grow old”, which refers to the simple cataract removal surgery used in the mature stage of cataracts before the 1980s. This is a concept determined by the fact that microscopic ophthalmology has not been mastered and applied for thousands of years. Ultrasonic cataract IOL implantation, on the other hand, is performed by an ophthalmologist with extensive experience in microsurgery, under a high-definition microscope, with the help of a precision ultrasonic emulsification system, through an incision of about 3.0mm, using ultrasonic energy to emulsify (dissolve) and suction out the core of the cataract (the nucleus) and preserve a capsule, and then implant an IOL of a certain degree into the capsule. Basically, the physiological structure of the eye is restored. The softness of the nucleus is closely related to the difficulty of ultrasonic emulsification, i.e., the harder the nucleus, the more difficult the surgery; the softer the nucleus, the easier the surgery, therefore, it is most suitable for immature cataract surgery. In particular, ultrasonic cataract surgery is less damaging, less painful, with minimal reaction and quick recovery of vision. As people’s living standards continue to improve, the elderly live longer, but their physical fitness and ability to recover from trauma have relatively decreased. Therefore, early surgery at the immature stage of cataract is conducive to postoperative recovery and greatly reduces the pain of low vision that patients endure for a long time while waiting for maturation. Therefore, it is advisable for elderly cataract patients to have regular checkups and to have elective surgery as long as their visual acuity is affected (bare eye visual acuity of 0.3 or less) and their life is inconvenient. Of course, it is best to choose ultrasound-emulsification cataract extraction IOL implantation.