Almost everyone in their elder years will develop cataracts, but it can still come as an unpleasant surprise to learn that you have them. Thankfully, cataract surgery is very safe and effective at repairing the problem. As a bonus, if you've had astigmatism for all your life, the repair process for cataracts could actually benefit your vision and make it better than ever. This guide will describe how astigmatism and cataracts tie together and how the cataract surgery can potentially improve your astigmatism.
What Astigmatism Does To Your Vision
If you have astigmatism, you know that it can cause your vision to appear blurry, out of focus, and distorted. However, understanding the way that it does this is important to understand how it can be fixed.
Eyes with astigmatism have irregularities in the shape of the cornea. When light enters the eye, these irregularities distort the rays of light, altering the shape of them when they reach the retina. Since the retina is receiving a distorted image, that's what your brain sees.
How Cataracts are Repaired
When you develop cataracts, that essentially means that the lens of your eye becomes cloudy, which limits how much you can see. To repair a cataract, your eye doctor will either manually perform surgery or use a high-powered laser to cut into the eye and remove the damaged lens. From there, a prosthetic replacement lens will be put in its place.
For people with normal, good vision, the lens is simply designed to replace what the patient's own lens used to be like before it became cloudy. However, if you have vision deficits like astigmatism, you may actually benefit further from this procedure.
How Your Vision Can Be Corrected
When you visit your eye doctor or eye surgeon, they will perform a thorough examination of your eyes, both inside and out. This includes a vision test to determine if you have problems like nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism.
If your doctor concludes that you have astigmatism, they will be able to have a custom-crafted lens produced just for your eyes. This lens will still serve the standard purpose of replacing your cloudy natural lens, but it will also act as an internal contact lens. The new replacement lens will counteract the ways your cornea distorts the light entering it. As it passes through the new lens, the light will be corrected, and you'll receive a normal image in your retina and brain.
Following your cataract surgery, you may be able to stop wearing glasses or contacts entirely if you've had to wear them due to your astigmatism. At the very least, you can expect to need less vision correction, which could allow you to choose from a wider variety of lenses and frame styles in the future. Talk with your eye doctor about your astigmatism to find out if you qualify to have your vision corrected with a replacement lens.
Share18 December 2017
How do you know when you need to get glasses for reading? As we get older, our eyes don't work as well as they once did. I squinted and adjusted my newspaper to make up for my failing eyesight but it wasn't enough after a while. I have talked with my eye doctor about the signs of failing eye sight and what can be done to put it off a bit. Between what my eye doctor has taught me and what I have read in books and online, I have gathered quite a bit of information about protecting your vision and seeing clearly long into your older years.
