Due to aging and UV exposure, the lens inside our eye, called the crystalline lens, can turn cloudy and reduce your vision. This is called cataracts. Clarity of vision may be regained after surgery to remove the cloudy lens and replace it with an artificial lens.
After cataracts removal surgery, you will likely have to follow up with the eye clinic the next day, a week later, and a month later. If there are no complications and vision is stable, your doctor will likely give you an appointment at a much longer interval, and a prescription for eyeglasses if you require so.
Whether you require eyeglasses would depend on the resulting prescription after the surgery, as well as the lens implant used. Some eye surgeons prefer to correct both eyes for good distant vision, with eyeglasses required for reading, Other eye surgeons may correct one eye for near vision, called monovision, or use multifocal lens implants to give good vision for both far and near simultaneously. You should discuss this with your eye surgeon to better understand the correction that you will receive.
If there are changes to your vision, you should visit the eye clinic first, rather than doing a new pair of eyeglasses. The large majority of patients would not have too significant changes in their eye refractive status (‘eye power’) one month from the surgery date. You should also take into account if you will also be doing cataracts removal surgery for the other eye.
If you did cataracts surgery at a younger age, and the eye surgeon corrects your vision for clarity at distance, you may notice that near vision becomes significantly poorer. This is normal; as our body’s natural lens have an abiity to focus or accommodate according to the distance of the object you are looking at. In older patients, this is less significant, as presbyopia (old flower) sets in, and hence the natural lens would already have lost some of it’s ability to accommodate.
Eyeglasses can help with any ‘left-over’ power, as well as with near vision if the lens implant was done for far vision only.
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