Dr. Mitch: What you need to know about cataract surgery

Dr. Mitch, good morning and happy new year. Happy new year. I hope everyone is going to have a great start to a great year. Fingers crossed. It's better than 2024. Here here. I'll drink to that. All right. Mitch, speaking of a new year and a new beginning, you know, as we get older and live longer, more and more of us look at the potential or possibility of having a cataract surgery to improve our vision. So I thought I'd ask you about what should be considered before going ahead and having that done.

So it's really a function of age. Now you can have congenital cataracts, in other words, being born with it, and you can develop a cataract when you have trauma to the eye and injury to the eye. A cataract basically means that the lens, instead of being clear, becomes cloudy. And as we age, especially with exposure to ultraviolet radiation over time,

It'll be accelerated. If you're diabetic, it'll be accelerated. If you have other issues, certain medications can cause it. You get clouding of this lens and you can't see this clearly. The good news is we can repair that. I don't want to minimize it. It's surgery, yes.

But it's very straightforward and it's day surgery. And what they basically do is they make a small incision or a number of small incisions into the surface of the eye. They necessitate the eye and give you a medication to make you very calm, but you're awake. They mash up the lens, suck it out and put in a new lens and you're good. So it's really a function of age, almost everyone.

will develop some degree of cataract at some time uh... the procedure it's from what i understand is painless right and it doesn't take very long uh... i don't know to find pain i am told it is painless yes and i will assume that i'm certainly did they do an esthetize the eyes you don't feel anything they give you medication make you feel much more comfortable i've never heard anyone complain of pain during the procedure and it is it's day surgery it takes it's a very

Short procedure they watch you afterwards to make sure that you that you're doing okay, and then they send you home with an eyepatch And you have to protect the eye at night by putting a protector on so you don't inadvertently rub it or do something like that

And the healing can take anywhere from about four to six weeks. Is it the smart approach Mitch to do one eye at a time? Is that what people are doing? It's really up to you. I personally would do it that way because don't forget the eyes can be patched. And I don't know about you, but I'd like to be right. I'd like to be able to see and do things under certain circumstances. They will do both eyes together, but certainly just in terms of convenience for your lifestyle.

It might be better just to do one, let it recover, then do the other, once that you have a functional line, you can still bounce around and do things. Is there an advantage to delaying it? And the example I have in my mind is, you know, if you haven't done, let's say at the age of 50, you know, you could live another, I don't know, 35 or 40 years, and you only have one shot at this, right? You can't do it a second time. No, no, no, no, you can easily, they can replace the lens if necessary. Oh, no, no. If you need it, you need it, you do it.

You don't want to delay unnecessarily because that'll hamper your life and your vision and your ability to do things. So if you need it, you need it. Remember, it can only be done by a doctor. So it's an ophthalmologist, an eye doctor who specializes in surgery as opposed to an optometrist, which are great people and they're professionals, but they can't operate. So you need to be seen by an ophthalmologist, an eye doctor to have the surgery done. And they won't do the surgery if they don't have to. Number one,

And number two, if it needs to be redone, there's all sorts of, yeah, no, it's, I wouldn't worry about that at all. If you need it, you need it and you get it done. All right, very good. Always insightful and informative. Dr. Mitch, thank you again and all the best to you in the family in 2025. To you as well to everyone listening.