Cataracts are a big disease, you will become blind if you get them? It’s not that serious! Do cataracts have to wait until they mature and become completely blind before surgery? This view is outdated. Cataracts are a common disease among middle-aged and elderly people. As they age, they become increasingly cloudy and their vision decreases, affecting normal work and learning. Age-related cataracts are generally considered a normal aging phenomenon, and there is no special effect for medication. Surgery is the only proven method, and with the emergence of new technologies, there is no need to wait until maturity to operate. Liu Gang, Ophthalmology Department, Xuzhou Central Hospital
Don’t wait until cataracts are ripe before treatment
Cataract is a treatable eye disease, but there are misconceptions about the best time to treat cataracts, which delays the most ideal treatment time. Wood money, it is generally believed that patients with corrected visual acuity below 0.5 can be considered for cataract surgery. Cataract, which is the clouding of the transparent lens, is currently the world’s first blinding eye disease, mainly manifested as progressive and painless loss of vision.
So what is the best way to get surgery? Many cataract patients still cling to what they saw and heard when they were young, believing that cataracts must wait until they are mature and completely blind before they can be operated on. In fact, this belief is due to the limitations of previous cataract surgery techniques. With the advent of ultrasound emulsification surgery over the years, this limitation has been overcome and there is no need to wait until maturity before surgery. It takes 5 to 20 years from the diagnosis of cataract to its full maturity. If we wait until maturity and then operate, often patients’ vision continues to decline and they have to endure the pain of ground strength for many years in between. In addition, patients with diabetes and hypertension are themselves prone to fundus lesions. Therefore, patients should choose the timing of surgery based on their own needs, and it is better to be early than late.
Technology update: Painless cataract removal to avoid the risk of accidents under local anesthesia.
It is a common sense that anesthesia is necessary for opening surgery. In the past, when playing anesthesia for cataract surgery, a needle must be inserted about 3 cm from the side of the eye to inject anesthesia into the tissue behind the eye in order to achieve pain relief and braking effect of the eye, however, this local anesthesia method also has some disadvantages. In short, there will be certain risks when playing anesthesia if inadvertently it is easy to cause bleeding in the eye, and in serious cases, it will lead to blindness of the patient. How can patients achieve the effect of anesthesia before surgery, while avoiding the risks that may occur with needle injection anesthesia? After years of clinical practice, the use of surface anesthesia can completely solve the problem of pain, but the key to the procedure is whether the surgeon can achieve a sufficient level of skill. The anesthetic effect of general local anesthesia can last for about 2-3 hours, so the surgeon has enough time to perform cataract surgery on the patient, but the time for using surface anesthesia, that is, the anesthesia with “eye drops”, is only about 30 minutes. It requires fast and accurate surgery.
Skill + experience = the key to successful surgery
The procedure of cataract extraction under local anesthesia (painful) and episodic anesthesia (painless) is the same, but painless anesthesia requires a high level of clinical experience, patience, and the ability to deal with unexpected situations because of the short anesthesia time. However, for patients, cataract ultrasound emulsion surgery is short, the incision is small, the postoperative reaction is small, the patient recovers quickly, the postoperative astigmatism is small, only a drop of eye drops of surface anesthesia is needed to eliminate the pain of the surgery, and the accidental risk brought by the anesthetic injection can be avoided, so the safety of the surgery can be guaranteed and the surgery can be completed within ten minutes.
Early detection to seize the opportunity of treatment
When people grow old, their eyes become dizzy and cataracts come uninvited. Many patients are overwhelmed by this, or they think it is a “natural part of aging” and do not care much about it. Unbeknownst to them, this may lead them to a world of darkness and lifelessness.
“Among the cataract patients I see, many of them just don’t know enough about this disease and put it off again and again, thus delaying their condition.” Cataracts are painless eye diseases that cause vision loss, mostly in older people over 50 years old. A cataract is a clouding of the lens. The causes of the disease are very complex. Diet, age, ultraviolet radiation, emotions, medications, trauma and other causes can all cause lens clouding.
The lens is like the lens of a camera. In order to see objects clearly, the lens must remain colorless, transparent and soft. If the lens is cloudy, the original pure black pupil has a white area, there will be blurred vision, fear of light, seeing things in double vision and other symptoms, at first the symptoms are very mild, often mistaken for presbyopia, will not attract attention, but if not treated in a timely manner, the lens gradually hardens, over time will also cause the lens liquefaction, can cause glaucoma, lens dislocation, retinal detachment and other complications. Therefore, once you find similar symptoms you should go to the hospital early to avoid aggravation of the condition.