Cataract

== =eye with a cataract =



Lens's are made mostly of water and protein. Certain proteins are responsible for keeping clarity. Overtime the structures of the lens are altered, leading to gradual clouding of the lens. Other factors that may lead to cataracts are..light exposure,smoking,diabetes, or the use of certain medications. As you age, the lenses in your eyes become less flexible, less transparent and thicker. Also injury's can lead to the development of a cataract because it changes the tissue that makes up your eye's lens.

A cataract clouds your vision, which is behind the iris and pupil. The lens works like a camera lens, focusing light on the retina at the back of the eye. The lens adjusts the eye's focus, letting people see things clearly, clolse and far away. But as we get older, some of the protein may gather together and begin to cloud a small area of the lens. This is a cataract, and over a period of time, it may grow bigger and cloud more of the lens, making it extremely hard to see.

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Having cataracts is ussually compared to looking at a foggy windshield of a car or through the filthy lens of a camera. Cataracts may cause a bunch of complaints and visual changes, including messed up vision, problems with glare, bad color vision, increased nearsightedness along with frequent changes in eyeglass prescription, and occasionally double vision in one eye. Some people notice a problem called "second sight" in which one's reading vision gets better as a result of their increased nearsightedness from swelling of the cataract. A change in glasses may help once vision starts to change from cataracts; in other words, as cataracts continue to advance, vision becomes cloudy and stronger glasses or contact lenses will no longer improve sight.

At first, the cloudiness in your vision caused by a cataract may affect only a small part of the eye's lens and you may be unaware of any vision loss. As the cataract grows larger, it clouds more of your lens and distorts the light passing through the lens. This may lead to signs and symptoms you're more likely to notice.

These are symptoms of cataracts.
 * Cloudy, fuzzy, foggy, or filmy vision.
 * Glare from lamps or the sun, which may be severe.
 * Difficulty driving at night due to glare from headlights.
 * Frequent changes in eyeglass prescription.
 * double vision
 * second sight
 * Difficulty performing daily activities because of vision problems.

[|**http://www.allaboutvision.com/conditions/cataracts.htm#ixzz1DfuHFb2E**]

The treatment for early cataracts has Some things easy things you can do. Wear better eyeglasses, get better lighting in your home, get magnifying glasses or just use sunglasses.The only cure for cataracts is surgery **Cataract Surgery** Cataract surgery is recommended only when vision loss interferes with normal activities such as reading or driving, or if the cataract is preventing the treatment of another problem. The decision to perform surgery should be based on the patient's own assessment of functional impairment combined with the results of the eye examination and measurement of visual acuity using the Snellen test. When visual acuity is 20/40 or better, the potential for benefiting from the surgery decreases and the risk relative to potential benefit rises. In general, the better the visual acuity is, the greater is the need for verification of functional disability before performing surgery.
 * Extracapsular surgery:** when the lens is removed and the back half of the capsule behind the lens remains in the eye
 * Photoemulsification:** a type of extracapsular surgery in which the lens is softened with sound waves and removed through a needle. The posterior capsule remains.
 * Intracapsular surgery:**this is a rare type of surgery in which the surgeon removes the entire lens, including the capsule. Usually the lens is replaced by an Intraocular lens, which becomes a permanent part of the eye. If a condition or disease prevents the use of an Intraocular lens, a soft contact lens may be prescribed instead.



Cataracts have been a medical problem throughout history. In early times, strange concoctions and eye drops were used to treat cataracts until physicians in ancient Babylon and India began surgical treatment. Their highly primitive method involved using a sharp instrument to push the cloudy lens to the bottom of the eye. This method is still used in some parts of Africa. In the 18th century, surgeons progressed to making an incision in the eye to remove the entire lens and capsule instead of pushing it backward. One surgeon tried replacing the cataract with a small glass lens, but it was too heavy and quickly sank to the bottom of the eye. With the eye’s natural lens removed, the only way a cataract patient could see after surgery was to wear thick, heavy cataract glasses. By the 20th century, surgeons learned to remove only the cloudy lens and leave the empty capsule in the eye. During World War II, British surgeons discovered that pieces of Plexiglas from shattered canopies of fighter planes did not cause any harmful reaction in pilots’ eyes. Using this light, plastic canopy material, British surgeon Harold Ridley designed a tiny lens that was successfully implanted in the eye. In 1968 American surgeon Charles Kelman adapted a new technology called ultrasound to remove cataracts. This procedure, which is also known as phacoemulsification, uses a tiny probe with a vibrating tip to gently break up the cataract and wash it away. Cataract surgery was revolutionized when ultrasound and plastic lens implant technology were combined. Today, after decades of development, modern cataract surgery is considered one of the safest surgeries performed with millions of successful procedures completed every year around the world.

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