Cataract surgery has the po­ten­tial to be life chang­ing! June is ded­i­cat­ed to cataract aware­ness and its abil­i­ty to dras­ti­cal­ly im­pact our lives. Cataracts are one of the most com­mon eye con­di­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ag­ing pop­u­la­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the lat­est as­sess­ment, cataract is re­spon­si­ble for at least 51 per cent of world blind­ness. Al­though cataracts can be sur­gi­cal­ly re­moved, in many coun­tries, T&T in­clud­ed, bar­ri­ers ex­ist that pre­vent pa­tients to ac­cess surgery. These bar­ri­ers are of­ten lack of fund­ing for cor­rec­tive surgery, and some­times it is just an over-sub­scrip­tion in an al­ready bur­dened pub­lic health care sys­tem. Be­fore reach­ing the stage of blind­ness how­ev­er, many per­sons suf­fer from low vi­sion and hence the im­pact of cataracts is a pro­longed one.

A cataract is a cloud­ing or loss of trans­paren­cy in the lens of the eye usu­al­ly due to ag­ing. The lens is the clear part of the eye that helps fo­cus light on the reti­na and in the nor­mal eye, the light pass­es eas­i­ly through the trans­par­ent lens. With cataracts how­ev­er, the lens is cloudy and there­fore the im­age you see be­comes blurred.

What are the signs and symp­toms of cataracts?

• Cloud­ed, blurred or dim vi­sion

• In­creas­ing dif­fi­cul­ty with vi­sion at night

• Sen­si­tiv­i­ty to light and glare

• Need for brighter light for read­ing and oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties

• See­ing “ha­los” around lights

• Fre­quent changes in eye­glass or con­tact lens pre­scrip­tion

• Fad­ing or yel­low­ing of colours

• Dou­ble vi­sion in a sin­gle eye

Why life chang­ing?

Cataract surgery can sim­ply change your life. This 10-12-minute surgery (not in­clud­ing pre-op prepa­ra­tion or short re­cov­ery af­ter the surgery) done by your oph­thal­mol­o­gist is one of the most com­mon and per­fect­ed surg­eries in the world. Dur­ing the surgery, your orig­i­nal and cloud­ed lens is re­moved and a clear syn­thet­ic lens or IOL (in­traoc­u­lar lens) is in­sert­ed.

This surgery is an out­pa­tient surgery so it means that you don’t have to stay in the hos­pi­tal af­ter the surgery.

Re­cov­er­ing at home af­ter surgery is rel­a­tive­ly easy and with on­ly a few sim­ple re­stric­tions. Your vi­sion may be blur­ry af­ter the surgery, but this is re­al­ly just your body and brain get­ting used to your new IOL. With cataracts your brain would have ad­just­ed to the im­pair­ment, so af­ter the surgery it will need to “re­mem­ber” how to see un­ob­struct­ed. With­in a cou­ple weeks, your vi­sion will great­ly im­prove.

Hav­ing your cataracts re­moved can be a ma­jor turn­ing point, es­pe­cial­ly if you’ve had to deal with them for a while. Over this time, you would have be­come ac­cus­tomed to poor eye­sight and found dif­fi­cul­ty in do­ing tasks like dri­ving or even read­ing or watch­ing tele­vi­sion. Af­ter surgery, you will be amazed at what you can now see and do all the things you couldn’t.

It is im­por­tant to vis­it your eye doc­tor to learn how to keep your eyes healthy.

For more in­for­ma­tion on cataracts you can vis­it our web­site at www.trinidadeye­hos­pi­tal.org.

Dr Ron­nie Bho­la

Trinidad Eye Health Hos­pi­tal