CATARACT SURGERY COMES TO LAKE VIEW MEMORIAL HOSPITAL
Dr. Kevin Treacy, MD

Dr. Kevin W. Treacy practicing Opthalmology for 22 years has started performing cataract surgery at the Out Patient Surgery Center at Lake View. Dr. Treacy is delighted to be able to provide this service to our community enabling his patients an opportunity to have surgery closer to home. For more information or to make an appointment, please call 218-722-6655.

What is a cataract?

A cataract is a clouding of the eye's natural lens, which lies behind the iris and the pupil. The lens works much like a camera lens, focusing light onto the retina at the back of the eye. The lens also adjusts the eye's focus, letting us see things clearly both up close and far away.

The lens is mostly made of water and protein. The protein is arranged in a precise way that keeps the lens clear and lets light pass through it. But as we age, some of the protein may clump together and start to cloud a small area of the lens. This is a cataract, and over time, it may grow larger and cloud more of the lens, making it harder to see.

Talk to your ophthalmologist and think about surgery when your cataracts have progressed enough to seriously impair your vision and affect your daily life. Many people consider poor vision an inevitable fact of aging, but cataract surgery is a simple, relatively painless procedure to regain vision.

How successful is Surgery?

Cataract surgery is very successful in restoring vision. In fact, it is the most frequently performed surgery in the United States, with over 1.5 million cataract surgeries done each year. Nine out of 10 people who have cataract surgery regain very good vision, somewhere between 20/20 and 20/40.

During surgery, the surgeon will remove your clouded lens, and in most cases replace it with a clear, plastic intraocular lens (IOL). New IOLs are being developed all the time to make the surgery less complicated for surgeons and the lenses more helpful to patients. One example is a new IOL that lets patients see at all distances, not just one. Another new IOL blocks both ultraviolet and blue light rays, which research indicates may damage the retina.

For more information on Cataracts: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/cataract.html

This service is provided by the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health.