River Forest, IL | Modern Advances in Cataract Surgery | Kirk Eye Center

Scott Kirk: When I was growing up, I would often accompany my dad. And actually in high school, I was a technician for him and a scrub tech. So I got to see cataract surgery as it was done in the 1960s and 70s. In that era, patients were often admitted to the hospital where they would stay for five days. The surgery at that time, we didn't have intraocular lens implants. So following cataract surgery, after a three month healing period, patients would be given glasses that were exceedingly thick. They often would distort your vision in the periphery, but it was all they had at the time.

Scott Kirk: Today you don't have to let a cataract get all the way dense so that you can't see to get around. So when your lifestyle is affected by decreased vision, that is a time where you can consider having your cataracts removed if they're responsible for that. We have implants now, which have totally changed the ability for us to give patients good vision. So instead of having thick glasses or having to wear contacts, we can replace that with an implant. We even have implants now that can correct for astigmatism that one has had all their life. We can also correct with a multifocal implant so that folks can see in the distance and near without glasses. And people are just crazy about that. And it makes our life much nicer because people are happy when we have finished with that.