That brings us to the cataract surgical procedure itself. Cataract surgery is typically performed while the patient is sedated but awake. The procedure itself usually takes between ten and twenty minutes, and most patients can return to normal activities within a day or two of surgery. It is rare for patients to experience a significant amount of pain in the days following surgery, and most surgeons prescribe only eye drops for a few weeks as the eye heals. Although the risk of problems is low, all surgeries carry at least a small risk, and for this reason, most surgeons in the United States will allow one eye to heal before surgery is performed on the second eye.
What happens during surgery is that the surgeon removes a patient’s cataractous lens and replaces it with a plastic lens that remains in the patient’s eye for the rest of their life. All lens implants can correct patient’s nearsightedness or farsightedness, for instance, and the majority of people are legal to drive a car without glasses following cataract surgery. There are many types of lens implants that are available for patients who wish to decrease, or possibly eliminate, their need to wear glasses after cataract surgery. For patients with significant astigmatism, toric lenses can be implanted to give good vision without the need for glasses or contact lenses. In addition, bifocal, multifocal, and improved depth-of-focus lenses can allow patients to not only drive, but also read and use a computer without glasses.
The fact that cataract surgery is a fairly quick, very safe procedure that is performed under mild sedation, coupled with the fact that patients experience very little downtime or discomfort, and can end up with vision that is better than it had been in years has truly made it one of the great medical miracles of the last 100 years.