![]()
2007/09/05
FREDERICTON (CP) - When Fredericton businessman Murray Gregg realized he was literally seeing the world through jaundiced eyes, he knew the cause must have something to do with his vision, not his disposition.
"Everything was foggy and yellow," he says. "When I looked at snow, for instance, instead of being white it was kind of yellow. That’s when I realized something was going on with my eyes."
A trip to the optometrist and then the ophthalmologist confirmed what Gregg, 70, suspected - he had cataracts, a clouding of the lens of the eye.
In just over a month, Gregg found himself waiting along with a roomful of other patients for cataract surgery at a hospital in Oromocto, N.B.
Patients were wheeled in one at a time for the quick procedure in what seemed to Gregg like an assembly line operation.
"I wasn’t in that hospital any more than an hour and a half and I was out the door," says Gregg, who has since had both eyes operated on and now sees clearly.
The experience was similar for Rich Windsor of Halifax, 72, who had some qualms about the cataract surgery he needed last spring to correct his blurry vision.
"I was a little concerned because your eyes are very sensitive organs," Windsor says.
"I was thinking, ’Oh boy, this is going to be tough.’ But it wasn’t. There wasn’t any pain."
Cataract surgery is the good news story of the health care system.
Over 1.5 million cataract operations are performed every year in North America, and in most cases there are no complications.
According to a recent analysis by the Canadian Institute for Health Information, there were 230,564 cataract surgeries performed across Canada last year, although those figures do not include Quebec.
The institute says this represents a 10 per cent increase from the previous year.
Dr. Lorne Bellan of Winnipeg, one of Canada’s leading cataract surgeons and president-elect of the Canadian Ophthalmological Society, says cataract surgery is one of the most satisfying procedures a physician can perform these days.
"It’s very nice being an ophthalmologist," he says.
"You get people coming in saying, ’I’m having real problems’ and when it’s all said and done, they walk out with big smiles on their faces and they’re really happy because our success rates are so high."
Bellan says he tells his patients there is more than a 95 per cent probability the procedure will restore their vision - and he says that’s being conservative.
"It’s a very good procedure and it really works well," he says.
Just 20 or 30 years ago, cataract removal was much more complicated.
Those were the days when patients had to wait for the cataract to ripen to the point where it was hard enough to be physically clutched and removed from the lens of the eye. In other words, patients had to wait until they were almost blind before they could have the restorative surgery.
It’s technology that changed cataract surgery.
Bellan says surgeons now use an ultrasound device that smashes the cataract-infected lens into microscopic pieces and lifts it out of the eye.
"It’s like a miniature jackhammer that breaks the lens up and sucks it out as it’s going," he says.
The significance is profound because eye doctors no longer have to wait for the lens to become rock hard in order to operate. The technology is so agile, it can be used on infants as well as the aged.
It also requires much less invasive surgery.
A standard incision in the old days was half the circumference of the eye.
"Now the standard in Canada is to make an incision only 2.75 millimetres," says Bellan, adding that even slow surgeons can perform the procedure in 15 minutes.
"That has a huge impact on the success of surgery, the rapidity of recovery and the improvement of outcomes . . . It is probably the biggest reason rates of cataract surgery have jumped so much over the last few decades."
Once the cataract and old lens are removed from the eye, a new artificial lens is implanted.
Bellan estimates rates of cataract surgery have jumped by 300 to 400 per cent in the past few decades, and he expects the numbers will continue growing by leaps and bounds as the population ages.
Another reason cataract surgery is a success story is due to the fact that the federal and provincial governments are tackling wait time issues for the procedure.
Sight restoration, or cataract surgery, is one of five key areas targeted for wait time reduction by Ottawa, which is transferring $5.5 billion to the provinces to accomplish the improvements.
Bellan says physicians tracking the issue now give Canada a ’B’ grade for cataract surgery wait times, and the numbers are continuing to improve.
"The trend is moving in the right direction in Canada," he says.
Here are some facts on cataracts from the Canadian Ophthalmological Society:
What are cataracts?
-A cataract is a clouding of the lens of the eye. The lens is located near the front of the eye. It focuses light on the retina, at the back of the eye, to form the images we see. A cataract may affect just a small part of the lens, or it may cloud the entire lens.
-Cataracts do not spread from one eye to the other, but they may develop in both eyes at the same time.
-Cataracts are not caused by overusing your eyes, and using your eyes doesn’t make them worse.
-Cataracts usually develop over many years, not over a few months.
-Having a cataract does not lead to permanent blindness.
Types of Cataracts:
-The normal process of aging can make the lens harden and turn cloudy. Age-related cataracts are the most common, and they may occur as early as age 40.
- Cataracts in children may be inherited or may have been caused by an infection before birth. These are called congenital cataracts and babies have them at birth.
-Eye injuries, such as a hard blow, puncture, cut, intense heat, or chemical burn can damage the lens and cause traumatic cataracts in people of any age.
-Certain diseases, such as diabetes, can cause cataracts to occur at an earlier age. These are called "secondary cataracts."