Dr. Kameen's Blog

I had the privilege last week of attending a meeting in which  Dr. William Martin, from Toledo, Ohio, gave his impressions of modern day cataract surgery and the use of advanced technology intraocular lenses from an interesting perspective. Not only has he performed thousands of these cataract surgery procedures, as I have, but he has also been a patient and has had his own cataracts recently removed! He gave a great accounting of his preoperative concerns, thoughts and what went into his decision to have the Restor Multifocal Intraocular lens in each eye. He then proceeded to describe his memories of being in the outpatient surgical suite, where he had his cataract surgery performed without any sedation(don't do this!) in order to more completely remember his experience. He has continued to maintain an ongoing account of his visual improvements, as well as some challenges, on his facebook page( www.williammartinmdfacebook.comwilliammartinmdfacebook.com). It makes for interesting reading, however he does tend to go on and on a bit more than I might.

The experience of cataract surgery has changed tremendously in recent years and will continue to change in the future. We are currently transitioning from performing the procedure with an ultrasonic device to performing similar steps with a controlled Femtosecond laser, so the safety and precision of the procedure is only going to improve, and it is already fantastic! When one has their cataracts removed, they arrive at an outpatient surgery facility and are there for about 90 minutes, although the surgery takes about 10 minutes. Much of the preliminary work involves making sure all of your questions are answered, meeting with an anesthesiologist who will give you some mild sedation, the procedure itself performed by your cataract surgeon, then a brief post op resting period to make sure you are fine to go home.

Weeks before the procedure you will meet with your surgeon(in my office I do this personally) and review the procedure, as well as learn about, then choose, with the advice of your surgeon, the proper advanced technology intraocular lens that will give you the best visual result. Remember, these results last a lifetime, so the choices you make should be given the proper amount of time so you get all of the visual results you want. You see, modern day cataract surgery allows us to not only correct the cataract, but to correct any preexisting astigmatism, nearsightedness, farsightedness or presbyopia(the loss of reading after age 40). Very often, after one of my 65 year old patients has this type of cataract surgery, they are seeing better than their 38 year old children!!

I will be writing more about the Femtosecond technology that is coming along to assist us in performing even more precise surgery than we do now. This technology is in its early stages, but it is surely exciting and is going to dominate the airwaves soon.....so, stay tuned!