What is the most suitable lens for cataract surgery?

Cataract surgery is one of the most frequent in our center. One of the main advantages of undergoing this surgery at ICR is that we can perform it with presbyopia correction lenses.

This allows patients with myopia, hyperopia, presbyopia or astigmatism to have certain independence from glasses, besides restoring the vision loss caused by cataracts.

Types of intraocular lenses

Cataract surgery requires extracting the crystalline lens (one of the eyes’ natural lenses) and replacing it for a new intraocular lens, that will allow the patient to recover its vision. This intraocular lens can be:

• Monofocal. It achieves a reduction in the dependance of glasses for distance vision, but not for near. The patient will sitll be needing glasses for activities like reading, manual tasks or using the phone.
• Trifocal. It offers several focal points, which allows a good vision in near, intermediate and farther distances.
• EDOF (Extended Depth of Focus). Is a lens with distance vision correction that also offers a good intermediate distance (computer, car controls, etc.), but it requires wearing glasses in near distances.
• Toric. It is a variant of monofocal, trifocal or EDOF lenses, implanted in people who also have astigmatism.

What should be considered to determine the most suitable lens in cataract surgery?

The choice of the kind of lens will depend on the vision quality expectations from the patient and several determining factors such as the existance of other eye diseases, age, professional and leisure activity or the daily routine of the person who has to undergo the surgery.

However, each patient presents a very different case from the rest. That is why the choice of the kind of lens is personalized and adapted to the medical and lifestyle needs of every person. The goal of the surgeon’s recommendation is always improving the patient’s quality of life.