Complaints & connections · borters.ch
The lens clouds over the years — the operation is one of the commonest and most successful of all.
Also known as: cataract · clouding of the lens
Open in the tool — with search and all the links →This compilation is for information and replaces neither medical diagnosis nor treatment. If you have symptoms, see a doctor.
Clouding of the eye’s lens — gradually blurred vision, glare, faded colours. Usually age-related; promoted by UV light, smoking, diabetes. Very effectively treated with a short operation (lens replacement). Antioxidants can’t cure it but support lens health.
It is not the finding that decides but whether reading, driving and recognising faces still work. There is no reason to wait for a certain ripeness — the procedure today takes a few minutes.
Halos around headlights, worse sight against the light, colours becoming paler and more yellow. That comes before the sharpness — so the optician’s chart is not the only measure.
A standard lens focuses at one distance — usually for far, with reading glasses afterwards. There are alternatives with their own advantages and drawbacks; the question is what one needs most in everyday life.
Some people experience a renewed clouding behind the artificial lens after months to years. That is no new cataract and is fixed with a laser in a few minutes as an outpatient.
The drops over the prescribed weeks matter more than they seem to. Increasing pain, a rapid loss of sight or a red eye in the first days belong reported at once.
There are no drops for cataract. The operation swaps the clouded lens for a clear one — that is the treatment; it takes about twenty minutes and is done when the clouding gets in the way of daily life, not by a measured value.
From seventy-five, most people have a visible clouding of the lens, and from eighty nearly everyone. The clouding grows over years — which is why it is often noticed only when night vision or reading no longer holds up.
Oncoming headlights flare widely, halos form around lights, the sun dazzles more than before. That is often what is noticed first — long before the sharpness of vision drops.
The change is so slow that it is rarely noticed. It often becomes striking only when one eye has been operated on and the comparison becomes possible.
An even blurring without pain and without redness that increases over months to years and does not change with cleaning the glasses.
Anyone who can suddenly read without glasses again while distance vision gets worse is often experiencing exactly this: the lens changes its focusing power. Frequent new prescriptions in a short time are a pointer.
No value detects a clouding of the lens — the slit-lamp examination does. A raised sugar does make it appear distinctly earlier and progress faster.
A fluctuating sugar changes the focusing power of the lens. Anyone whose sight suddenly changes should not buy new glasses straight away.
A very low calcium over a longer time is a rare but correctable cause of clouding — above all in younger people.
In observational studies people with less cataract eat more of it. In the large intervention trials the course could not be halted — 10 mg a day over 5 years did not change the operation rate.
The lens contains vitamin C at high concentration, and observational studies found less clouding with a higher intake from food. Capsule studies could not confirm it — a clouded lens is made clear again by nothing.
Cortisone over a longer period causes a particular form of lens clouding — behind, under the capsule. It disturbs vision in bright light especially, and it forms dose- and time-dependently: a question of amount and timeframe.
With diabetes the lens clouds earlier. In addition, strongly swinging sugar temporarily changes the focusing power — after a new treatment setting one therefore waits some weeks before new glasses are prescribed.
Observational studies find later clouding with high intake from leafy greens, sweetcorn and egg yolk. Intervention trials could not confirm it — the link stays observational.
Observational studies find later clouding with high intake. Intervention studies could not confirm it — the operation remains the only treatment that works.
The lens contains a lot of vitamin C. Whether more of it delays clouding has not been shown — stopping smoking and UV protection are the established factors.