What is an Eye Cataract
Eye cataracts
An eye cataract is a cloudiness which develops in the normally present lens of the eye
How do eye cataracts affect vision?
It reduces the light passing through the lens, and reduces your eyesight. For people who have cataracts, seeing through cloudy lenses is a bit like looking through a frosty or fogged-up window. Clouded vision caused by cataracts can make it more difficult to read, drive a car — especially at night — or see the expression on a friend’s face. When cataract develops to an extent which hinders your normal activity, then cataract surgery will be needed to restore your eyesight to excellent and clear quality.
When cataract or lens opacity are significant enough to interfere with your daily activities, then it needs to be removed. Small incision PHACO surgery and foldable (soft) lens implantation (including the new multifocal lenses) is currently the best recognised procedure for the management of cataract. This is done by Dr Khalil in some of the best centers in Cairo, and patients get out of the hospital in the same day.
The lens is held inside a capsule located just behind the pupil and the colored iris. It is made up of protein fibers and water molecules that are arranged exactly to allow light to pass through without interference. Cataracts occur when these fibers begin to split over time, clustering together and clouding the lens. As fibers continue to break down, the clouding becomes more and more dense and covers a larger part of the lens.
What are the Causes of Eye Cataracts?
A cloudy lens can be the result of drugs or chemical exposure, trauma, radiation, heredity, or simply related to the aging process. Cataracts can also occur at birth. A cataract is NOT a growth, NOT a film, and NOT a tumor. When the cloudy lens reaches a certain point, we simply stop calling it a lens and start calling it a cataract.
How is a cataract diagnosed?
The patient is usually the first person to notice a cataract, because the first sign is often difficulty with vision. For example, street signs are difficult to read or require close inspection to decipher. sometimes glare at night and difficulty with night vision is a prominent complaint.
Some cataract patients notice increased daytime glare similar to a dirty windshield when driving west in the afternoon sunshine.To an ophthalmologist, the most common age-related type of cataract looks a lot like a dirty brown marble inside the eye. After surgery on one eye, it is not surprising that many patients remark about the bright vivid colors in the treated eye and the dim, brown, hazy vision in the other eye that still contains a cataract. Dr Khalil using a slit lamp microscope can evaluate cataracts during the office examination.
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