Cataract is a common disease in the elderly population, its diagnosis is relatively simple, and the current treatment is relatively mature, generally using cataract ultrasound emulsification and IOL implantation. Due to the previous surgical techniques, such as using modern extracapsular extraction of cataract and IOL implantation, instead of applying ultrasound to crush the nucleus of cataract, the nucleus is delivered by applying manual methods, so it is thought that cataract must wait until it is mature (i.e. completely blind) before surgery can be done, and sometimes both eyes are blind before they come to the clinic, and some patients even have serious complications, which is not very scientific at present.
At present, generally speaking, surgery can be considered when the corrected visual acuity is below 0.3, and there is no need to wait for complete blindness. This is because once the cataract enters the mature and overripe stage (has become completely blind), there may be degeneration and brittle changes in the crystal capsule membrane, increased hardness of the crystal nucleus and lesions in the crystal suspensory ligament, which not only increase the difficulty and risk of surgery and the chance of surgical complications, but also make it easy for secondary glaucoma or crystal dissolving glaucoma caused by cataract to occur.
In contrast, cataract ultrasound emulsion removal surgery and IOL implantation at a relatively early stage will greatly improve the safety of the surgery and the patient will recover quickly after the surgery. Certain types of cataracts such as posterior subcapsular cataract or cortical uneven clouding cause vision loss, etc., although the examination vision is still quite good, and their visual quality can be significantly impaired, then it may also be necessary to relax the indications for surgery. Of course, since different patients have different requirements for visual acuity, the specific needs to be communicated in an interview.
In conclusion, cataract surgery is not required only when the patient is blind or mature, which is a misconception based on outdated technology. Of course, a specific examination is needed to determine this.