Welcome to Case of the Day!
Today, we’re going to discuss how we determine the strength of the lens or intraocular lens we place in an eye during cataract surgery.
A patient came in to get scheduled for cataract surgery and then had many questions about why we are doing all this testing. The basic test that we’re doing is related to the strength of the lens to be put in your eye during cataract surgery.
Cataract surgery involves removing your cloudy lens—your lens inside your eye behind your pupil—then inserting a clear lens so your vision becomes clear. We need to know what strength of lens to put in there because if you’re nearsighted or farsighted, we can then adjust that with the implant and then give you really good distance vision most of the time without glasses, unless we use a special lens of some other type that actually can give you distance and near.
So what are we measuring? Basically, it’s just pure optics. What these machines measure (one of them is called a Lenstar, which is fantastic and very accurate) is the distance from the cornea back to your retina. The actual length is extremely important to know whether your eye is nearsighted or farsighted. A farsighted person, on average, has a shorter than normal eye; a nearsighted person has a longer than normal eye, typically speaking, and so therefore how long this is determines whether your eye is nearsighted or farsighted. The other thing that determines that is how curved your cornea is. If you have a very steep cornea, then you’re typically nearsighted, and if you have a very flat cornea, you’re typically farsighted.
Another important measurement is how much distance there is from your cornea back to where your own lens sits or where the implant will sit. The computer inside the machine then calculates the strength of the lens that would be placed in your eye to correct your vision. That is extremely important if you want a great result from your cataract surgery.
There are lots of other tests we’re now doing as well to help us decide which implant is best and how we can give you the best vision. Another one of those tests is called a Tracey technology machine, which measures different parts of your vision. So it measures and does a wavefront analysis of your vision, which determines what type of aberrations you have in your vision system.
Even if you have no glass prescription and are 20/20, you still have aberrations in your vision system. We don’t have perfect eyes, and we don’t have perfect vision. Say an animal like a hawk that’s flying way up in the sky and looking for a tiny mouse down in the grass has a lot better vision, and we would not be able to see that mouse. We don’t have perfect eyes, but we still have enough vision to do what we need to do. These measurements help us come up with a lens that matches more closely to what your own eye has, as far as how it’s shaped and what aberration you have in your system.
Another test we do is measuring the quality and health of your cornea because that can determine, a lot of times, what type of lens would be good for your eye. That’s valuable information as well when we’re sitting down with the patient and going over all their options of the different kinds of lenses we have today, and what we’re going to do about providing you with the best result.
If you have more questions about cataracts or other vision problems, contact the Cataract & Refractive Institute of Florida today. If not, may God grant you healthy eyes and great vision!
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At the Cataract & Refractive Institute of Florida, our board-certified ophthalmologist uses state-of-the-art tools and techniques to help patients manage their eye issues and vision problems. Schedule an appointment online or call our office near you!
- 613 Del Prado Boulevard, 33990
- (239) 772-2122
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- (239) 368-1020
- 4061 Bonita Beach Road, 34134
- (239) 949-1190
