Visual Rehabilitation for the Elderly Through Improved Surgical Technology

Abstract

During the last decade, microsurgical improvements have developed extremely rapidly in eye surgery. The use of operating microscopes has opened this field to a wide range of technical innovations such as finger suture materials, more sophisticated instruments, and new implants. The result has been better rehabilitation of patients, whose vision was impaired by opacities in the refracting media of the eye. The most frequent cause of poor vision in the elderly is cataract, which is an opacification of the lens in the eye. Most people older than 70 years will have some cataract, with about 30% having opacities that markedly reduce visual acuity and often produce glare phenomena in at least one eye (see Figure 1). There is at present no medical treatment for cataract.