A cataract is the clouding of the natural lens of the eye, limiting the amount of light that can enter, and preventing us from seeing well.

You will usually have your cataract surgery 1-4 weeks after the consultation with your surgery. Most people spend between two and two and half hours at the clinic on surgery day, and we recommend that you take at least two days off work.

When you come to have your eye surgery, remember to bring your consent form. It’s also a good idea to bring sunglasses to wear on the way home, and please don’t wear eye makeup.

Many people bring a friend or family member with them to help them get home afterwards, as your vision may be blurry for 48-72 hours. You will be able to see within a few minutes of the procedure being completed, but it will be a few days before you can see well enough to drive. Even if you take a taxi or use public transport, your friend can make sure you pay the correct fare and get home to the right house!

Cataract surgery is a safe and effective way to restore vision and serious complications are very rare. 85% of our patients have better than 20/20 vision one month on from the procedure. And 100% of patients have better than 20/40 vision (the legal driving standard) one month on from the procedure. Our surgeons have complication rates of less than 0.5%, compared to the UK average of 3% for cataract surgery. Our surgeons are also recognised as among the best cataract surgeons in the UK as voted by other ophthalmologists.

It’s completely normal to experience a little-blurred vision while your eyesight settles for a day or two, or in some cases for a week or two. Some people can require glasses for distance or near vision after cataract surgery but also have the option of laser eye surgery to decrease the need for glasses. Following cataract surgery, a minority of individuals do experience the onset of visual problems similar to those caused by cataracts, with symptoms including blurry vision and difficulty with glare from bright lights. This relatively common phenomenon is caused by a condition known as posterior capsule opacification, and is caused by a thickening of the lens capsule that secures the artificial lens in place.

Treatment is a quick, simple, routine and low-risk procedure called YAG laser capsulotomy and can be performed as an outpatient procedure. Following this, patients can expect their sight to return to normal within a few days (the same level of sight that was originally restored by the cataract surgery).

The choice of your surgeon may be the most important thing you decide about cataract surgery. Whilst most general ophthalmologists perform cataract surgery, all our surgeons are dual trained in cataract and laser eye surgery. This gives them a unique skill set and approach to cataract surgery that aims to achieve optimal potential vision for the patient.

This is possible because of their ability to use laser eye surgery to refine the outcomes of the cataract surgery for best potential vision. This matters to you for the simple reason that lens prediction in cataract surgery isn’t perfect. As a national average 70% of patients will be within +/- 0.5 dioptres of the refractive target, and 90% within 1 dioptre. 10% will be outside this range. This means that glasses can be needed for best possible vision in some cases including driving.

Astigmatism correction is similarly unpredictable. At OCL we are one of the few clinics in London to use the Lenstar Hill-RBF artificial intelligence lens prediction technology which achieves accuracy of over 95% within 0.5 dioptres of target outcome. If you are having a multifocal lens and are off target or have astigmatism you will not have the best possible vision from that eye without glasses. The fact that our surgeons use AI technology to predict lens power and are able to refine their outcomes by laser eye surgery, where necessary, means that the patient achieves their full potential vision.