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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;sand, post: 7783137, member: 118540&quot;]Hello [USER=87186]@LaCointessa[/USER]. I hope that, you will read all of this post, even though it is long, because it contains a lot of information, relevant to you. I&#039;m not an eye doctor, but I learned a lot, because of a recent experience with my mother. However, my knowledge is limited, and perhaps flawed, because I&#039;m not an eye doctor, so please take everything I say, with a grain of salt. I wrote all of this down, from my memory, except for a couple of sentences, about secondary cataract, which I copied from my notes. I hope I didn&#039;t make any mistakes. I wish I had time, to proofread it. If anyone sees any errors, in what I wrote down, please let me know. </p><p><br /></p><p>First of all, be sure, to get your eyes tested, for glaucoma, which is a very common ailment, which causes the pressure in the eyes to be too high, causing damage to the (retina I think). You may already know this, but I&#039;ll mention it anyway. Glaucoma is an insidious disease, because usually people don&#039;t know they have it, until damage has already been done. Every time I go to an optometrist, to get tested for new eyeglasses, they test for glaucoma. One treatment for glaucoma, is eye drops. Luckily, they caught my mother&#039;s glaucoma early, and she has used eye drops for many years. My aunt&#039;s husband was not so lucky. The other treatment for glaucoma is surgery, which they often wait to do, until someone needs cataract surgery.</p><p><br /></p><p>Regarding cataracts, my mother recently had cataract surgery in 1 eye. She was going to get cataract surgery in the other eye, but they said her blood pressure was too low that day, and then the pandemic happened. The doctor also fixed her glaucoma in the eye, using ab interno canaloplasty (ABiC), which cleans out a particular canal, to allow the eye fluid to drain better, without the use of a bleb. So far, it seems to have worked well.</p><p><br /></p><p>What they do, with cataract surgery, is they removed the old, natural lens in the eye, and install an artificial lens in the eye. The natural lens is flexible, especially when someone is young, which allows the muscles of the eye to adjust the shape of the lens, to focus on objects which are close to the eye.</p><p><br /></p><p>As people get older, the lens gets harder, and the eye muscles become weaker, which reduces the ability of the eye to change its focal distance. The focal distance becomes increasingly &quot;frozen&quot; at a particular distance, usually far away. This is why older persons usually need reading glasses, to see objects close to them. But they may need distance eyeglasses also, to see objects, which are beyond their narrowed focal range. However, older persons usually still have some ability to change their focal distance.</p><p><br /></p><p>Until recently, for cataract surgery, the new, artificial lens was always a hard lens. This meant, that the focal distance was completely frozen, at a particular distance. The focal distance depends on the shape of the new, hard, artificial lens. Before the cataract surgery, they measure the shape of the eye, and then select the shape of the new, hard artificial lens. The patient decides, whether the patient wants their vision to be frozen at infinity (far sighted), or whether the patient wants their vision to frozen up close (near sighted). Most patients choose infinity, so that the patient can drive a car with no eyeglasses. For the infinity option, the patient doesn&#039;t need eyeglasses, except for seeing things that are close to them. I don&#039;t remember what that exact distance is, at which eyeglasses are needed. However, some patients choose to have one eye nearsighted, and the other eye farsighted. That&#039;s what you were talking about. That may be a good option, but I don&#039;t know.</p><p><br /></p><p>However, recently, there have been developed, artificial lenses, which are flexible. Unfortunately, as far as I know, these flexible artificial lenses are not well established. Also, as far as I know, these flexible artificial lenses can cause problems for some patients, especially glaucoma patients. My mother&#039;s ophthalmologist, strongly recommended against a flexible artificial lens for my mother, because of my mother&#039;s glaucoma. Therefore, my mother got the usual hard artificial lens, focused at infinity. Also, I think maybe Medicare doesn&#039;t pay for the fancy flexible artificial lenses. Also, the flexible artificial lenses, are not simply squishy lenses, if I remember correctly. The flexible artificial lenses are complicated mechanical devices, with levers or something. Therefore, I&#039;m a bit wary of them.</p><p><br /></p><p>One important thing about cataract surgery, is that, quite often, some time after the surgery (a few weeks? I don&#039;t remember), the patient develops a &quot;secondary cataract&quot;. This happens when the back of the lens capsule, the part of the lens that wasn&#039;t removed during surgery and that now supports the lens implant, becomes cloudy and impairs your vision. They test for that, some time (a few weeks? I don&#039;t remember) after the cataract surgery. Secondary cataract is treated with a painless, five-minute outpatient procedure called yttrium-aluminum-garnet (YAG) laser capsulotomy. In YAG laser capsulotomy, a laser beam is used to make a small opening in the clouded capsule to provide a clear path through which the light can pass.</p><p><br /></p><p>For 2 weeks after cataract surgery, you have to wear goggles or something, when you sleep, to ensure that you don&#039;t touch the eye, when you are asleep. When my mother had her eye done, I remember being very worried about this, because my mother sometimes falls asleep without planning to. I bought several different pairs of goggles for her, to try to ensure, that she wore them.</p><p><br /></p><p>When my mother gets her other eye done, I don&#039;t know, if she&#039;ll choose&nbsp; a nearsighted artificial lens, or a farsighted artificial lens. She was initially unhappy with the cataract/glaucoma surgery, because the eye felt irritated at first. It also affected her near vision, of course, especially because they treated her more nearsighted eye. I tried to explain to her, before the surgery, that she would need reading eyeglasses, but I don&#039;t think she really understood. But now, she seems ready to get the other eye done. Her distance vision seems to be very good, even with just one eye fixed. However, she hasn&#039;t yet gotten the other eye done, so we&#039;ll see, if she decides to do it. My father only ever got 1 eye done, and he never got the other eye done. I&#039;m not sure why. Maybe he wanted to hedge his bets.</p><p><br /></p><p>Well, there you go. I hope I wrote all of this down correctly. I hope I didn&#039;t make any mistakes. I wish I had time, to proofread it. If anyone sees any errors, in what I wrote down, please let me know. If you have any questions, please let me know, and I&#039;ll try to answer, with my limited knowledge. If I make any corrections, or if I think of anything that I left out, I&#039;ll try to put the corrections and additions, not only to this post (while I am allowed, by the 2 hour time limit, to do so), but also in additional posts.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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