Which Lens Should You Choose Before Cataract Surgery?

Cataract Surgery can improve a patient's vision and change a life. Learn about the different types of lenses you can implant into your eye, here.

Cataract surgery is one of the most simple surgeries to perform - it will take a fully trained surgeon approximately 15 minutes to complete. The surgery involves removing your old and cloudy eye lens and replacing it with the synthetic lens that you have chosen along with your doctor in order to improve your eyesight.

It’s likely that you will need cataract surgery at some point in your life, with severe cataract affecting the vision of around half of adults over the age of 80.

After cataract surgery, you’ll need to rest for a few days and allow your eyes time to rest before going about your normal business as best you can do. While resting, activities that are gentle on the eyes like reading or watching television are fine to do. It’s likely that you will experience an improvement in your vision almost instantly.

Choosing Your New Eye Lens

As part of the surgery to correct cataracts, your surgeon will replace your eye’s own lens with a new one, providing you with clear vision for the first time in quite possibly a long time, for many patients.

Mono-Focal Lenses

It can sometimes be disappointing for patients to realize that, even after the surgery, they are likely to need to use corrective eyeglasses for activities such as reading and any other close-up activities. The reason for this is that most patients will opt to have a mono-focal lens put into their eye, which will provide the best clarity of vision overall, but will need corrective glasses for activities for nearsightedness.

Mono-focal lenses are a good choice for most people, and they will help to restore your eyesight to the point where you can carry out most daily life activities easily. Activities such as driving and moving around your home will be easy with mono-focal lenses.

For patients who have cataract surgery when they are younger, the mono-focal lens is a good choice because it restores the contrast in their vision, and contrast is something that will diminish over time as a patient ages.

Multifocal Lenses

For patients who will be performing a lot of close-up tasks, avid readers, artists, and any other activities that require you to focus on objects within a foot of the eyes, the choice to wear glasses for these activities may not be one you want to take.

It’s for this reason that it is possible to get multi-focal lenses - but, it’s worth noting that there is a trade-off with visual clarity because of the need to cover all focal ranges within the multi-focal lens itself.

If flexibility and the ability to focus on things at varying instances is required, then the trade-off for slightly less clarity in the eye may be working it. Ultimately, it’s up to the patient to decide exactly which lens he or she would like after a conversation with their doctor, taking into consideration the aspects of their life that are very important to them and would be affected by a multi-focal lens.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or the management of EconoTimes