Cataracts are common in the senior citizen community. What many people don’t know however is that cataracts are becoming more prevalent in men and women in their 40s and 50s. While most middle-aged people do not need to worry about cataracts Las Vegas doctors say that blurred vision, washed-out colors and problems seeing at night which would normally signal time to get a stronger prescription, could actually be signs of cataracts in otherwise healthy individuals.
Incredibly, as many as one in seven 40-50 year-olds could suffer from cataracts and not even know it! They may attributed their impaired vision is to age-related deterioration that can be corrected with reading glasses without knowing that their symptoms could get much more severe.
Las Vegas Cataract surgeons are saying that a few decades ago it was very rare to see cataracts in patients younger than 60, but now they are seeing perfectly healthy patients in their 40s and 50s with this condition – which happens to be the leading cause of blindness in the US.
A cataract is a clouding of the lens – normally clear tissue found behind the iris (the coloured part of the eye) which helps to focus light on the retina at the back of the eye to form an image. The lens sits inside a capsule filled with water and protein fibres. Usually these fibres are clear, but a cataract occurs when the fibres become opaque, making vision blurred and cloudy. This condition starts off as a small patch, however if left untreated this clouding can develop across the entire lens, causing blindness.
Although the reason for this change in demographics is not yet known, higher-risk groups include asthmatics on steroid medicines, those who suffer from severe short-sightedness, have a family history of the disease or who have sustained a trauma to the eye. Heavy drinking and smoking also raise the risk.
Some Las Vegas Cataract Specialists suspect it is because with new technology it is easier to detect cataracts early on, whereas before cataracts were only detected after some vision deterioration had occurred, but this is only speculation.
In Las Vegas Cataract Surgery is commonly employed to correct the problem. Surgery is carried out under local anesthetic and takes about 40 minutes. A tiny probe is inserted into the capsule surrounding the lens which emits high-frequency sound waves that break down the opaque proteins which inhibit vision. These fragments are then removed from the capsule using another probe, and the lens is replaced with a plastic implant that should last the rest of the patient’s life. For more information on cataracts, please visit your local ophthalmologist.