What is a Cataract?

Above is a small video on cataract surgery. Basically, a cataract is a clouding of the lens of the eye. Think of the eye like a camera. There is a lens of the camera and this is called the lens of the eye. There is also the film of a camera, and we call this the retina. The lens of the eye can get cloudy with age and we call that a cataract. As shown in the video, the lens of the eye is inside the eye behind the colored part of the eye called the iris. With age and time, the proteins that make up the lens can cloud together and prevent the lens from being clear. The lens tends to gradually become less clear with time so that a lens of a 1 year old is more clear than the lens of a 20 year old. This process tends to speed up with age. The lens normally goes from clear to yellow which continues to darken and it can even become brown or red eventually or in rare cases, completely white. This can increase glare, and cause difficulty with night driving or small print. Most of the time, these visual symptoms are the main way people can know if they have a cataract. The cataract can cause different visual symptoms depending on the type of cataract. Often cataracts will cause decreased night driving, but some cataracts can present with difficulty reading or just generally blurred vision. In rare cases, cataracts can cause glaucoma or pain, but far and away the most common cause is just visual symptoms. If you need cataract surgery, it is important to realize that the color of the surrounding world may change. This is because you may have gotten used to things being more beige or brown. For most people, this is an amazing development because everything seems so vibrant. If you think you may have cataracts, please call our office to schedule an evaluation for cataract surgery.