What's It Like To Have Laser Cataract Surgery?

How cool is it that lasers can be used to efficiently and safely remove cataracts!?! The answer, of course is super cool 😎! So what's it actually like to go through laser cataract surgery?

Laser cataract surgery has two parts. The beginning part where the laser is applied to the cataract and the afterwards where the surgeon uses a tiny vacuum to finish removing the cataract. In order for the laser to work precisely where we want, a small focusing lens is placed on the surface of the eye. To prevent this lens from moving around, the lens develops a suction onto the surface of the eye. This step can be a little weird. The suction effect causes a little bit of a pressure sensation on the eye. In addition, this pressure will cause the vision to fade and become blurry. But after the suction starts is when a lot of the fun begins! As the laser treats and softens up the cataract for easy removal, you can see a pretty cool light show. It can really be a bizarre experience!

The full laser treatments can take a few minutes to fully finish up. The machine first goes through all the advanced realtime measurements of your eye and then applies the laser. Once completed, the cataract procedure continues as normal (but also quicker since the laser already did a lot of work). So in short, laser cataract surgery isn't very difficult or uncomfortable at all!

Related Articles