Cataracts
Cataracts affect many people as they age. Cataracts can impact your visual acuity, your ability to drive a car, your ability to navigate low-light environments and even your ability to see at all. Fortunately, cataracts are a treatable condition.
What Are Cataracts?
A cataract is a clouding of the lens of the eye. If you've ever looked through a frosted or foggy window, then you know what having cataracts is like. Cataracts develop slowly. At first, it can be hard to tell whether you have a cataract. In the early stages, stronger lighting and eyeglasses can help you see through your cataracts. Eventually, you may need surgery.
Cataract Causes
Cataracts are often caused by age, but can also be caused by factors like injury to the tissues in the eye. Some people are at higher risk for cataracts than others and some people have inherited genetic disorders that can increase the risk of getting cataracts.
Cataract Treatment
When you're first diagnosed with cataracts, your eye doctor may recommend prescription glasses. Eventually, your cataracts will become so severe that prescription glasses won't help. When you reach this point, your eye doctor may recommend cataract surgery. You'll get cataract surgery when you and your eye doctor determine that your cataracts are interfering with your ability to perform normal activities, and thus interfering with your quality of life.
Signs of Cataracts
- •Sensitivity to light
- •Cloudy, blurry vision
- •Increasing difficulty seeing at night and driving at night
- •Seeing halos around lights
- •Colors seem to have faded or yellowed
- •Need for brighter light when reading
Who Is at Risk?
- •Diabetes
- •Increasing age
- •Smoking
- •Obesity
- •High blood pressure
- •Excessive exposure to UV rays
- •Eye surgery, injury or inflammation
- •Excessive drinking
- •Use of certain medications, especially prolonged use of corticosteroids
Need Cataract Treatment?
Contact the professionals at Tolland Eye Care to get a diagnosis and learn about your treatment options.