Cataract surgery

Originally posted by sierra ↑

This is a routine operation these days. Your main concerns should be that the correct diopter lens are selected with any astigmatism amount and angle carefully calculated.
Once the new lens is placed in the pocket in the eye there is no going back. The window of opportunity for a lens exchange is very short as the lens bonds in place and needs to be cut up to be removed with possible permanent damage.

Make sure the physical measurements used to calculate the prescription of the new lens are based on laser and not ultra sound.
Because of my country location portable ultrasound was used and combined with thick corneas caused a error. This was confirmed after the event when laser measurement confirmed the error as 0.5mm and 1.0mm per eye. That meant the lens used were wrong by +1.25 and +2.5 diopters at infinity.
To put that in perspective the difference between reading and distance is about 2.5 diopters, so for my right eye I needed a 2.5 diopter correction for distance and 5 diopters for reading. That's a thick lens!

I looked into what could be done and because I was previously short sighted decided that a piggy back lens inserted into the right eye between the iris and the new lens was viable and the safest option. That operation was a success but after 3 operations I decided to leave things as they were with the left eye, at least for a while.
I need glasses for reading, as expected and can legally drive without glasses now but usually wear prescription distance sunnies to make it crisp.

On the plus side night time driving is now a pleasure and my vision in sunshine is vastly improved. It's not the best under artificial lighting, such as in the supermarket, where it looks a bit hazy but that seems a common effect.

What happened to me seems to be very rare and my ophthalmologist and surgeon was upset[very] at the error and bent over backwards to do whatever he could to correct it. We literally worked together to find the best solution, double checking the correction figures and angles until we were both excited about the operation and the results. He talked to me all the way through the operation and was clearly loving it, so was I with the drugs they gave me.

Sorry to ramble on but be warned to ask questions and do your best to make sure there are no errors.

Expand

Hi Sierra
Thanks for the info