CATARACT - AN EASILY TREATED EYE CONDITION
SOUTHERN CATARACT SURGEONS’ Dr Brett Rogers is one of New Zealand’s most experienced
Cataract Surgeons. Brett has performed about ten thousand cataract operations on
Southland and Otago patients. He now operates exclusively at Southern Cross Hospital.
CATARACT is a very common, easily diagnosed, readily treatable eye condition that causes deterioration of vision due to clouding of the normally transparent natural lens inside the eye. The natural lens focuses light rays into the eye, allowing clear vision. Over time, the lens gradually becomes hazy and is then called “cataract”.
Cataract is a normal age-related change that eventually affects everybody. Light is ‘scattered’ by the cataract-haze, causing the quality of the vision to deteriorate (often as though one’s spectacles were dirty.)
Common cataract symptoms include blurred, foggy vision and glare/dazzle in the sun or when driving at night, especially on rainy nights.
Cataract sufferers may frequently clean their spectacles, trying unsuccessfully to improve their vision.
Some cataract sufferers can still read small print on a doctor’s eye chart, yet at home be disabled by poor quality, poor contrast vision or by glare from scattered light.
Quality of life gradually suffers and affected people can become a danger on the road and can be at increased risk of falls, hip fractures and car crashes.
Because vision loss is gradual, those affected often forget how clear their vision once was or assume they are “just getting older”, not realising that normal vision can be restored by cataract surgery.
In the early stages, sunglasses can reduce glare; however the only way to treat significant cataract and regain normal vision is to have the cataract removed and replaced with a clear artificial lens.
Cataract surgery is one of the most common and most successful operations performed.
Most cataract surgery is performed on those over the age of 50. About 10 per cent are in their fifties, 20 per cent in their sixties, 35 per cent in their seventies and 35 per cent are over the age of 80.
Almost everyone over the age of 60 is affected by cataract to some degree. Cataract slowly worsens and virtually everyone over the age of 80 would see very much better with cataract surgery.
Symptomatic patients are often told that their cataract is “not yet bad enough” to treat, however cataract is bad enough to treat when symptoms begin to interfere with everyday activities such as driving, watching television and reading, or whenever cataract affects quality of life. There is no advantage in delaying treatment until cataract becomes advanced or ‘mature’.
Cataract surgery in experienced hands is a very safe and almost 100% successful operation. Cataracts never return and the replacement lens remains clear.
Specialist Cataract Surgeon Brett Rogers is one of New Zealand’s most experienced Cataract Surgeons.
Dr Rogers has performed almost ten thousand cataract operations on Southland & Otago patients.
He operates at Southern Cross Hospital’s modern eye-surgery theatre in Invercargill.
Dr Rogers safely removes the cloudy cataract using microsurgery, then inserts a clear intraocular lens (IOL) to restore normal vision.
Most of Dr Rogers’ cataract surgery is performed under local anaesthesia. Surgery takes 20-30 minutes and the total time in hospital is 2-3 hours.
He uses modern microsurgical techniques and state-of-the-art equipment, so recovery is quick and you can be back to normal activities within days.
Refractive Cataract surgery can eliminate the need for glasses for short and long-sighted problems and by using special ‘toric’ premium lenses that are not normally available in public hospitals, Dr Rogers also routinely corrects ‘astigmatism’ (another common spectacle problem, caused by an oval curvature of the surface of the eye) to give even better vision than a regular lens. Following such surgery, one can expect to have excellent distance and reading vision, and to see well enough to drive without spectacles (even if one has previously needed strong spectacles since childhood.)
Dr Rogers routinely offers a “blended vision” option for cataract surgery patients who would also prefer a higher degree of spectacle-independence for near or mid-range visual tasks. Public hospitals use a questionnaire & ‘points’ to determine whether you can receive publicly-funded cataract surgery and it is often wrongly assumed that a low ‘score’ means the cataract is ‘not bad enough to treat’; however public hospitals’ ‘threshold’ scores are determined by hospital funding and those losing out, frequently have Dr Rogers perform their cataract surgery at Southern Cross Hospital where ‘scoring’ and rationing do not apply and where surgery can be done straightaway.
Dr Rogers holds cataract clinics in Invercargill and Queenstown.
To make an appointment, please phone Dr Rogers’ rooms at (03) 218-7778
To make an appointment, please phone Dr Rogers’ rooms at (03) 218-7778
A referral letter for cataract assessment is not necessary.
