Dr Harold Choi

Yes, many patients do. One of the most common side effects is the patient still has a bit of degree or astigmatism, so seeking perfection is usually a futile exercise. But it's very common to have patients with almost perfect vision even without glasses and just require that tiny little bit of glasses power.

Most patients get full vision within one month.

No. However, if you are talking about different eyes, then yes. Some patients have a cataract in one eye and short-sightedness in the other eye. You can do cataract surgery in one eye, what we call Anisometropia and then if you want to do LASIK in the other eye, that's ok.

That's a good question and there is an ongoing discussion and it's important to decide. With multifocal lenses, the key benefit is allowing the patient to see both far and near through the same eye. In other words, with the same eye, you can see far and if you bring your handphone up close, you can see near as well, so that's the key advantage to the multifocal lens. There are two disadvantages of a multifocal lens. First is the cost, they are about 3-4 times more costly. Secondly, most multifocal lenses have a low design and that causes a lot of glares, halos and effect.

The first step would be to numb the eye, in various ways, like eye drops or injection around the eye to make sure the surgery is painless. One of the most important steps is cleaning, I'm sure any eye doctor will clean the eye with a lot of cleaning solution. After that, a small incision will be made to access the eye. Then we will make an incision in the anterior capsule, the front part of the lens, usually making a circular opening to access the lens. Then we use something called an ultrasound machine to go into the lens before activating it to smash the lens into small bits.

Yes, that's a good question. Some people get some fibrosis of the capsule, the layer behind the lens, after cataract surgery. Over time, they get this fibrosis and makes vision less clear, requiring something called YAG laser to just create a hole in that capsule only if patients experience it. It varies, some patients never get it, depending on the patient.

Certainly, the most common cataract we see is what we call senile cataract or age-related cataract and these affect people above the age of 60. At the same time, there are certain people, even in babies and young adults, who get cataracts. These are usually rarer and more related to trauma or pre-existing conditions. Usually, the overwhelming majority of patients with cataract are of the age group above 60.

The surgery usually takes, from start to end, maybe about half an hour. It depends, some cataracts could be more complicated than others and take 45 minutes but, by and large, it takes about half an hour.

Yes, in fact, most people have asymmetrical cataracts so they can do one eye.

Well, for very mild cataracts, the common treatment is doing nothing. Maybe prescribing a new pair of glasses. If patients are not too keen on surgery and feel that lifestyle is not impacted, I think its ok to just leave it. There are many patients, I mean the overwhelming majority of patients that I've seen with cataract, who say that the cataracts aren't affecting their lives, so we just leave it alone and that is fine. That is the most common way of treating it.

Not a good idea, cataract is not cancer, it's not a disease. I wouldn’t advise preventive cataract surgery.

Nowadays, with a small incision type, phacoemulsification, I think almost 99 per cent have done that method. The recovery is very fast and patients literally can get up and walk and drive the next day. I can’t say this is true for all cases. Different cataracts take different healing time, but I think mist is usually quite fast, you can use a computer and handphone and drive but usually, the advice is to stay off driving maybe for about a week or two.

I think the most serious complication is an infection. Thankfully it's very rare. The other complication will be manageable like high eye pressure, retina swelling, or detachment. I think most doctors will be on the lookout after surgery. Thankfully not all these are common. I think the most common complications from any surgery in the eye, like dry eyes. So the eyes will be dry six months, some residual or short-sightedness. You cannot expect 0 degrees after cataract surgery; there is bound to have a bit of degree of shortsightedness, maybe 50 or 75.

Definitely. One take-home message is: do not rub your eyes. I've seen many patients including young patients who have a cataract and other hosts of symptoms like retina detachment all caused by frequent eye rubbing. A take-home message for everyone: Please do not rub your eyes!

I think for me a good candidate would be someone who is motivated to do cataract surgery. I see a lot of patients in the course of my career who are very motivated to do cataract surgery because the cataract is affecting them, making life difficult for them. That makes my job pleasurable in a way as I'm granting them good vision and something that they want, so that is one good aspect. Other good candidates would consider the stabilisation of other ocular diseases.