Facility Locator

At the 154 Veterans Administration (VA) hospitals and 875 clinics around the country, veterans are receiving top-notch care.

Locate a facility

VeteransEyeCare.com

Cataracts

Signs To Look For/Symptoms:

A cataract is a clouding of the normally clear lens of the eye.

Symptoms include:

  • a painless blurring of vision
  • glare or light sensitivity
  • poor night vision
  • double vision in one eye
  • needing brighter light to read
  • fading or yellowing of colors.

Since the most common type of cataracts are related to the aging of the eye, the most common causes include family history, medical problems (such as diabetes), injury to the eye, medications, long-term, unprotected exposure to sunlight, previous eye surgery.

Additionally, other common risk factors for cataracts are smoking, diarrhea, alcohol use, and oxidative changes.

Less common causes include ocular trauma, inflammatory eye conditions, vitreoretinal or glaucoma surgery, and lens opacities resulting from electric shock.

Some inherited diseases such as galactosemia, hypocalcemia, Wilson disease, and myotonic dystrophy, can cause cataracts.  

Risk Factors:

Some risk factors are partial vision loss and blurring which can prevent the person from being able to carry out day to day activities.

Blindness is also a possible risk factor, if cataracts remain untreated.

Preventative Measures:

Protection from sunlight may slow the progression of cataracts. Sunglasses that screen out UV rays, and a hat can be helpful.

Avoiding cigarette smoking can also be helpful.

Increasing consumption of lutein and zeaxanthin, appear to reduce cataract formation.

An eye examination can detect and determine what state the cataracts are in.

Recommendations:

Surgery is the only way to remove a cataract, especially if the cataract symptoms are very bothersome. It is highly successful and 95% of the cases reported improved vision. In surgery, the cloudy lens is removed from the eye through a surgical incision, and the lens is usually replaced with a permanent intraocular lens implant.

However, if cataract symptoms are not very bothersome, then a different eyeglass prescription can he helpful of preventing the symptoms.

When a dense cataract obscures direct visualization of the fundus, an ultrasound test can be performed to determine the density of the eye.