Cataracts represent the increasing cloudiness and the hardening of the human lens. They can appear as an innate form in children. Usually, though, cataracts develop in the course of life as a slow progressing cause for visual deterioration. However, clouding of the lens can also result from an injury or bruise in the eye, or it can develop with prolonged use of cortisone.
Affected people usually notice that something has changed due to a higher sensitivity to light and a deterioration in visual performance.
At a later stage, the colors and contrasts of the environment are increasingly perceived as grayish and out of focus. Often, the clouding of the eye lens also leads to a greater glare sensitivity, e.g. there is increased glare from backlighting at night when driving a car or those affected are more blinded during the day in bright light conditions.
Due to the simultaneous increased thickening of one’s own lens, its refractive power grows so that with increasing cataracts, a previously existing farsightedness is reduced and an already existing short-sightedness can increase. It is therefore not uncommon for some patients to even be able to read without glasses temporarily and for the glasses to change in relatively short time intervals.
Severe visual impairments up to blindness are the result of an untreated cataract in advanced stages. But it doesn’t have to go that far these days.
Fortunately, the vision loss which has already occurred can be reversed with surgery. If you are affected by lens opacity in your everyday life, you should opt for surgery, because without surgery the visual impairment will continue.
In the operation, to put it simple, the old lens is replaced with an artificial lens. Our standard surgical technique is a minimal invase ultrasound method via small incisions with a 2.2 mm being the largest incision to the eye. All of the incisions will not be seen to other people after the surgery – so no one should notice!
Professor Koss additionally is expert for the use of a laser surgical technique to remove to old lens – the so called Nanopuls laser. In contrast to the Femto Laser technique, which we can´t identify medical positive benefits for our patients, the Nanopuls laser is protecting the cornea (the so called endothelium cells), which is medically necessary in some patients. https://www.grauerstar-laserop.de/de/#kliniken
In order to individually adapt this artificial lens, a so-called cataract preliminary examination is required. If you are referred for such a preliminary examination, please prepare for approximately 2 hours of treatment time and incapacity to drive on this day due to the dilation of the pupil.
As a special feature, all our experienced surgeons offer our patients an aspherical, yellow intraocular lens to protect the macula as a standard lens without additional payment.
The so-called after Cataract or Secondary Cataract refers to the clouding of the holding apparatus (the so-called capsule) after a cataract operation, which can occur in up to 30% of the cases after an uneventful cataract operation. This is usually treated with the so-called Nd: YAG laser capsulotomy. The surgeons in our eye center also master the treatment of more complex variants of the after cataract, which may have to be treated with a mini-invasive operation.