Question:
Is it necessary to wear glasses after cataract surgery? I'm a while off
from surgery, I found out in early December 2001 that I have a cataract
growing in my good sighted eye. I don't wear glasses or any correction.
It's approx 6/36 vision (20/120 ?). I have no sight in the left eye.
Answer:
After an interocular lens is inserted to replace the natural lens (with
its cataract), you lose the ability to accomodate, i.e., to change your
focus from far away to close up. Most people who have cataracts removed
are old enough that they have lost that ability anyway through aging.
Most people start losing the ability to accomodate a little past 40, but
there is some individual variation. For this reason, essentially
everyone past a certain age needs reading glasses or bifocals for close
work, even if they have perfect distance vision. (The only real
exception is people with enough myopia that the point of best focus is
at the normal reading distance or shorter. But of course such people
need glasses to see in the distance.) After having an interocular
lens inserted, you are essentially in the same situation as any other
person who has lost the ability to accomodate and in the same situation
you will be in anyway when you are old enough.
My wife and I both were very myopic and both of us had both eyes done.
I can see reasonably well in the distance without glasses, but I had
enough residual astigmatism that I generally wear glasses. (I can drive
without glasses if necessary and my license now says that.) My wife
never bothered to get her glasses prescriptions filled after the cataract
surgery and she uses drug store reading glasses for close up work.
It might be added that there are some new developments in interocular
lenses and cataract surgery which may change some of this, but I don't
believe they are in common use. One method preserves enough of the
function of the lens capsule so you are able to accomodate by distorting
the plastic interocular lens. Also, supposedly it is possible to
correct astigmatism by using an appropriate interocular lens and placing
it very carefully in the capsule. Personally, I wouldn't fiddle with
such things myself since the standard procedure works so well.
