John Kenyon Eye Institute

Cataract Care

What is a Cataract?

If you’re experiencing blurred vision, if headlights and sunlight seem too bright or colors have become dulled, you may have symptoms of cataracts.

A cataract develops when the crystalline lens clouds and blocks passage of light back to the retina. In a healthy eye, light enters through the cornea and is then focused by the clear natural, or "crystalline,” lens onto the light-sensitive retinal tissue in the back of the eye. There, the light is transformed into nerve impulses and sent to the brain for interpretation.

Most cataracts form over a period of years, although certain types progress much faster. While cataracts cannot be prevented, modern cataract care at the John-Kenyon American Eye Institute can help to safely restore precious eyesight.

Who is at Risk For Cataracts?

Cataracts are the leading cause of vision loss in adults and cataract surgery is the most commonly performed surgery in the United States, with more than two million procedures every year. Cataracts can occur at any age but are much more common after the age of 55. They can be caused by eye injury, medications, eye diseases, or they may be congenital. Although the majority occur as a part of the aging process, factors such as diabetes, smoking and sun exposure increase the risk of cataract formation.

What Are The Symptoms of Cataracts?

Individuals with cataracts often describe a number of visual problems, including:

Difficulty driving at night
Glare from headlights or bright sun
Difficulty reading fine print or threading a needle
Dulled color perception
Ghosting or multiple images are seen
Frequent changes in glasses prescription
Feel the need to clean glasses in an effort to clear vision

Your doctor will complete a thorough eye exam to determine if cataracts are present and if surgical treatment is needed.

Treating Cataracts

When a cataract advances to the point of visual disability, cataract surgery is necessary to restore vision. A pre-surgical evaluation at the John-Kenyon Cataract Center will include dilation of the pupils to evaluate cataracts and examine the health of the internal eye structures.

Then your doctor will take careful measurements of the eye shape and size to determine which lens treatment is right for you.

When treating cataracts the doctor will remove the cloudy lens and replace it with a new lens in an outpatient procedure. The artificial lens, called an Intraocular Lens (IOL), cannot be seen or felt by the patient and becomes a permanent part of the eye. Cataract surgery is one of the most common and most effective procedures performed in the United States.

Postoperative care includes follow –up visits and eye drops. Complete healing takes about four weeks but patients can expect to see results soon afterwards and can go back to many of their normal activities immediately. If surgery is required in the other eye, it can often be performed as soon as one to two weeks later.

More than 98 percent of cataract patients at the John-Kenyon Cataract Center have improved vision following cataract surgery and most patients will enjoy good distance vision without glasses.

Advanced Lens Options for Improved Lifestyles

With advances in lens technology, it’s now possible to have IOLs implanted to correct astigmatism and eliminate or lessen the need for bi-focal and reading glasses. John-Kenyon Cataract Center offers implantable lenses such as the toric IOL to correct astigmatism, the Crystalens® accommodating IOL, which corrects distance vision and moves with your eye for enhanced intermediate and/or near vision, and the multi-focal IOL, which works similar to bi-focal or tri-focal glasses. Contact us to learn more about the broad range of options available and to find the best lens for you.

More About Lifestyle Lens Options

The John-Kenyon Cataract Center offers the latest in implantable lens options. Your doctor can help suggest the right lens for you:

ReSTOR lOL - The ReSTOR lens lets patients see from near to far, usually without glasses, using an innovative optical technology called "apodization.” This technology, used in microscopes and telescopes, allows you to see the big picture, while also seeing fine detail.
Crystalens Accommodating IOL - The revolutionary new Crystalens IOL is a single-focus lens that works naturally with your eye muscles to give you the quality of vision you enjoyed when you were younger. The state-of-the-art Crystalens uses a "hinge" technology, which allows the lens to move, or accommodate, with your eye to focus seamlessly on objects near, far and all distances in-between.
TECNIS® Multifocal Lens- Designed to give patients back their youthful vision, the TECNIS® Multifocal Lens provides patients with high-quality vision at any distance and in any light condition even in low light. The advanced TECNIS® Multifocal Lens is an implantable lens that restores vision after cataract surgery and corrects presbyopia (the need for reading glasses). It delivers results superior to those of a standard multifocal lens and offers an excellent chance to become spectacle-independent.
Monofocal Aspheric Lenses: Aspheric IOLs are slightly flatter in the periphery and are designed to provide better contrast sensitivity. Contrast sensitivity is often referred to as "functional vision," beyond how well you see details on a standard eye chart. Poor contrast sensitivity also can cause you to stumble when you fail to see that you need to step down from a curb onto similarly colored pavement. Lack of contrast sensitivity is not the same as blurred vision. John-Kenyon offers two aspheric IOLoptions: The SofPort Advance Optics IOL and the Tecnic Monofocal IOL. Both lenses can provide better contrast sensitivity as well as the ability to reduce visual aberrations which can improve the ability to see in varying light conditions, such as rain, snow, fog, twilight and nighttime darkness.
Toric IOL - Toric IOL's correct not only your astigmatism but recapture quality distance vision in one step. Until the recent introduction of Toric IOLs, candidates for IOL's people could only have their nearsightedness and farsightedness corrected during the surgery. Toric IOL's correct not only your astigmatism but recapture quality distance vision in one step. These lenses provide the freedom from glasses you’re looking for while correcting astigmatism.

For More Information on Cataracts and Implantable lenses visit www.allaboutvision.com or www.cataractsurgery.com

How Do I Know if I am Ready For Surgery?

Your doctor will work with you and weigh all your individual needs when performing your evaluation. Insurance companies often require a specific level of visual disability before they will cover cataract surgery. Other co-existing eye diseases such as diabetic retinopathy or macular degeneration can also affect the timing of surgery. In addition, you must be healthy enough for surgery, although outpatient surgery only requires local anesthesia and is very safe even for individuals with heart, lung or other serious health issues.