Assessment of Cataract
Pre-operation Cataracts Assessment
Assessment of Cataracts occurs in the outpatient clinic in which your eye doctor will have full history and ocular examination. You should give full details about your general health and all the medications that you use. For example there is a medication called Flomax and it is alpha-receptor blocker.
It is used in benign prostate hypertrophy treatment. This medication has ocular side effect in which it will affect the performance of your eye doctor during phaco because it will cause floppy iris syndrome. For this reason patient who is on this medication should use atropine for at least 3 days before surgery to minimize this side effect.
In the clinic also your eye doctor should determine the power of intraocular lens that will be used and also the type of intraocular lens.
After you decided to have cataract surgery your eye doctor will discuss the steps that will occur during cataract surgery and also he will tell you what general complications that can occur and what are the specific complications that can occur in case you have any other ocular disorders.
On the day of surgery
The surgery is usually done in outpatient and you should come with one of your family member or friends It is usually done under local anesthesia or topical anesthesia but sometimes it can be done under general anesthesia according to the patient request.
You will be asked to be fasting from the morning. Also you will be asked to remove contact lens if you wear one and to not use eyelashes makeup.
You will use diluted eye drops to dilute your pupil. These eye drops are either cyclopentolate or tropicamide which both are anticholinergic medications.
The duration of surgery is usually 10 to 15 minutes but sometimes in case of hard cataract it can last for more the 15 minutes.
