Cataract surgery can correct vision to near perfect

Dr. Sean Neel exams Charles Wagster’s eyes after cataract surgery.

These days, Charles Wagster can see better than he’s seen in years – even before he developed cataracts. Wagster, a retired dispatcher for Weakley County Electric, has had a new type of cataract surgery that allowed his physician – Dr. Sean Neel – to correct his vision.

“The cataract implant lenses come in different powers so the physician can adjust for the patient and get the patient the best possible vision without glasses,” says Dr. Neel, a board-certified ophthalmologist at the Eye Clinic.

“My vision is sharp and clear now,” says Wagster, who had worn contact lenses a good part of his life.

Cataracts – a clouding of the eye’s natural lens – are a part of getting old, Dr. Neel explains. “You have a one hundred percent chance of getting cataracts if you live long enough. Most people, by age 60, will have the early start of cataracts. Diseases like diabetes even tend to speed up the process.”

Cataracts develop over a period of months or years. As your eyesight deteriorates, you may not even notice it. Your vision will begin to blur or even yellow, Dr. Neel says. Glare and halos are common.

As cataracts worsen, they cloud the eye’s lens, which is responsible for adjusting the eye’s focus so you can see up close or far away and for focusing light onto the retina at the back of the eye.

In the early stages of cataracts, Dr. Neel explains, your eye doctor may be able to change your eyeglass prescription to improve your vision. Eventually, though, you probably will need surgery to remove the cataract. “The cataract will continue to thicken and get denser and harder, and then turn white.”

You should consider surgery when cataracts cause enough loss of vision to interfere with your daily activities, he says. Cataract surgery, with the increasing improvement of the intraocular lenses, has become a successful, relatively painless way for people to regain good vision.

With more than 1.4 million cataract surgeries done each year, the surgery is one of the most frequently performed surgeries in the United States.

It is performed under local or topical anesthesia as an outpatient procedure. Dr. Neel first numbs the eye – either with eye drops or a shot beside the eye. He makes a small incision, about three millimeters long, in the clear front portion of the eye. He opens the front skin of the cataract and removes it. (It’s like a grape with soft skin around a hard center.) He uses a phaco-emulsion handpiece with soundwaves to break up any dense part of the cataract and suction it out.

Left with the outer skin of the cataract, he slides a new implant lens inside that skin through a small incision. The implant helps the eye focus; without it, the eye would need thick lenses and be very farsighted, Dr. Neel says.

After surgery, patients are given antibiotic and anti-inflammatory drops. Patients are told to wear sunglasses, not to rub their eyes, not to swim for two weeks, and not to drive the day of the surgery.

Dr. Neel does each eye about two weeks apart.

Just like any other surgery, cataract surgery has its risks, including a slight risk of infection and an even rarer risk of a retinal tear, Dr. Neel says.

After cataract surgery, most patients will need glasses for reading, but with the new implant lenses, may not need glasses for distance.

The lens implants continue to improve. Several companies are making an aspheric intraocular lens, which offsets the aging process by improving the quality of vision, such as contrast sensitivity and night vision. Most insurance plans cover the lens.

Another, called Restorlens and just approved by the FDA, goes even further. It tries to give you distance, middle distance and up-close vision, Dr. Neel says. “It moves like a young eye, giving the patient multiple points of focus.”

Advances like the new cataract lenses and changing technology in LASIK surgery, the most commonly performed refractive surgery procedure, make it easier for ophthalmologists to correct almost any vision problem, says Dr. Neel. “It’s amazing how things have advanced.”

First developed to correct nearsightedness, LASIK now corrects farsightedness and astigmatism. Some patients choose to correct one eye for seeing up close and the other for seeing distances. “We’re customizing LASIK to meet patient’s needs,” Dr. Neel says.

Wagster was quite nearsighted and had worn first glasses and then contacts for most of his life. His cataracts formed over six to seven years. He opted for surgery when his vision deteriorated; his eyes would itch and he’d have headaches just from the strain of trying to see.

Dr. Neel did surgery on his right eye April 19 and removed the cataract on his left eye May 5. With each eye, Wagster was seeing well almost immediately. “It’s just great,” Wagster says. “I don’t need to wear contacts anymore.”