As the aging population continues to increase, the incidence of cataracts is getting higher and higher. In the age of exploding knowledge and information, because of the lack of discernment, there are still many elderly people who lack proper knowledge about cataracts and do not detect them in time or know how to treat them properly, which is time-consuming and costly but often delays cataract diagnosis and treatment. These profound experiences in clinical work have prompted me to write “The Complete Guide to Cataract Treatment”, hoping to give patients correct and comprehensive knowledge of cataract diagnosis and treatment.
The first article first discusses how to detect cataract? What clinical manifestations suggest cataracts? Middle-aged and elderly friends can compare the following contents, and when suspicious symptoms appear, they can purposefully come to the hospital to be clarified.
1. Vision loss: This is the most obvious and important manifestation of cataract. In the early stage of cataract, the clouding only occurs in a part of the crystal and has little effect on the patient’s vision. However, with the development of the disease, the scope of clouding will be expanded and the degree of clouding will be aggravated, and the vision will be gradually damaged. Therefore, the key point to note is: middle-aged and elderly people should go to the hospital promptly when they have asymptomatic vision loss.
2. Decrease in contrast sensitivity: In common parlance, it means that many patients in the early stage of cataract have no obvious change in vision yet, but they feel that their vision is blurred, the boundary is indistinguishable, or the color of objects has changed: the color becomes less vivid, the contrast is not strong, black and white is not distinguishable, etc. With the development of cataract, this phenomenon will also be aggravated.
3. Refractive changes: Patients with cataracts can also experience an increase in the astigmatism of the eyes, a decrease in presbyopia, myopia, etc. A typical phenomenon is that some elderly people can thread the needle without presbyopic glasses although they see far and blurred, so they think their vision is okay and delay the diagnosis and treatment.
4, monocular diplopia or polyopia: this must refer to blindfolded one eye, with the other eye to see when there are double vision, double shadows, or multiple shadows. If there is double vision when looking with both eyes, it may be a problem of ophthalmology, or neurology, ENT, brain surgery, or endocrinology.
5. Glare: It is caused by light scattering due to cataract.
6.Change in color vision: Cloudy cataracts can cause a change in the color vision of the eye. Generally, senile cataracts cause objects to be slightly yellowish in color.
7. Visual field defects: This is not a phenomenon unique to cataracts. Any case of visual field defects should be seen promptly. Possible causes include: cataracts, glaucoma, retinopathy, optic neuropathy, intracranial lesions, etc.