A Comprehensive Guide to Different Types of Eye Surgery: Understanding Your Options for Clearer Vision

• Cataract Surgery

Cataract surgery is recommended to remove cataract or cloudy lens and improve your vision. Your eyes have lenses that focus light and are mostly made of water and proteins. As a cataract form, the proteins naturally start to break down, causing the lens to become cloudy and yellowed. Ageing is the most common cause of cataracts. However, certain medical conditions and medications and injuries can also cause cataracts. The presence of cataract prevents light from properly passing through your lens. As a result, you develop symptoms like blurry vision and halos around bright lights. Cataract surgery removes the cloudy lens and replaces it with a clear, artificial lens. An ophthalmologist performs the surgery and helps you select the type of intraocular lens that best works for you. Cataract surgery is currently the only proven solution to treat cataracts in adults. For most people, surgery restores vision with no complications. It’s a quick, outpatient procedure with a fast recovery. In current scenario cataract surgery can also make you free of glasses depending on the type of intraocular lens implanted. 

• LASIK Surgery

LASIK stands for “laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis”.

It is a refractive eye surgery that uses lasers to fix your vision errors. This surgery being an outpatient procedure allows you to go home the same day. LASIK corrects refractive errors, which is characterised by your eyes’ inability to refract or bend light as they should. Refractive errors lead to blurry vision. LASIK can help you see clearly and enjoy a better quality of life. LASIK may be a treatment option for people who don’t want to rely on glasses or contacts to improve their vision. After LASIK, you may not need your glasses or contacts at all. But not everyone is a candidate for LASIK. Your eye care provider will run a few tests to see if LASIK works for the anatomy of your eyes. LASIK is performed to change the shape of your cornea in order to improve the way light hits your retina. This, in turn, allows you to see clearly.

• Corneal Transplant

Cornea transplant is performed to replace the corena, the clear front layer of your eye. Corneal grafting and keratoplasty are the scientific names given to this process. Your eye care provider may recommend you to consider a cornea transplant if you have a damaged cornea. Cornea damage causes eye pain and cloudy and blurred vission. In a cornea transplant, the surgeon will remove the damaged cornea and replace it with donated healthy corneal tissue. For many people, cornea transplant surgery is a way to restore vision and improve their quality of life. A cornea transplant is suggested if you have Fuchs dystrophy, keratoconus, corneal ulcers, Bullous keratopathy and corneal damages caused due to earlier eye surgeries, injuries, inflammation and infections.

• Glaucoma Surgery

If glaucoma drops and laser treatment does not help you with your glaucoma, your eye care provider may recommend surgery. Surgery is not a cure for glaucoma, nor does it reverse vision loss, but it can help protect your vision and stop the condition from getting worse. A few types of glaucoma surgery that can lower the pressure in your eye are:

• Trabeculectomy

In this procedure, the surgeon creates an invisible tiny opening in the top of your eye. This opening allows the extra fluid in your eyes to drain away and results in decreased intraocular pressure. This is mostly recommended for open-angle glaucoma. Usually, you will be awake during this surgery with numbing medicines administered and it only takes less than 1 hour.

• Drainage Implant

A glaucoma drainage implant is a small device that is placed in the eye to treat glaucoma. Aqueous humor of a person with glaucoma will not drain from the front of the eye, resulting in increased intraocular pressure, which will damage the optic nerve. Untreated glaucoma may lead to blindness. In this case, a drainage implant helps aqueous humor to drain from the eye. No treatment can fix the damage already done to an optic nerve. However, drainage implants can help prevent further damage due to glaucoma.

• iStent Inject

iStent Inject creates two bypass pathways through the main source of resistance for aqueous outflow, trabecular meshwork. This results in multi-directional flow through Schlemm’s canal. iStent Inject is one of the smallest medical devices known to be implanted in the human body. Together, these unique advantages are designed to provide exceptional results in a minimally invasive approach.

• Eye Muscle Surgery

Eye muscle surgery is performed to treat crossed eyes or strabismus. This procedure makes your eye muscles tighter or looser to help the eyes align their position so that they’re centred and can work together. It is a day care surgery with minimal post op care and medications.

• Retina Surgery

During a retina surgery or vitrectomy, your ophthalmologist will remove the vitreous pulling on the retina. The vitreous will be then replaced with an air, gas, or oil bubble that pushes the retina into place so it can heal properly. This procedure is performed to treat detached retina