At the Kentucky Eye Institute you don't have to travel long distances for eye care, we have offices in central, southern, and eastern Kentucky. Each has free parking close by and all are wheelchair accessible. Making an appointment is simple. You can call the office nearest to you to make an appointment anytime Monday through Friday, between 8:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m.

A cataract is a cloudy area in the normally clear lens of the eye, a tissue located behind the pupil that is responsible for focusing light onto the retina (back of the eye). A cataract usually begins small and has little effect on vision, but as it grows and clouds more of the lens you may find that performing normal tasks, such as reading and driving, become more difficult.

The most common form of cataract is age-related, usually starting after age 50, but sometimes can begin at a younger age. Even though a cataract can start to form in your 50's, vision problems may not occur until much later. Cataracts also can be associated with diabetes, other systemic diseases, alcoholism, premature birth or birth defects (congenital or developmental cataracts), heredity, smoking, eye injuries, cumulative exposure to ultraviolet rays, and certain medications.

Symptoms of a Cataract May Include:

• Increased nearsightedness
• Sensitivity to light and glare, especially while driving at night
• Blurred vision or distorted images in either eye
• Changes in the way you see colors, or colors seem faded
• Cloudy, filmy or fuzzy vision
• Double vision
• Frequent changes in your eyeglass prescription
• Changes in the color of the pupil
• Poor night vision
• Cloudy lens at birth
  

Developing a cataract is one of those unfortunate things that befall most of us as we age. Between the ages of 52 and 64, you have a 50% chance of having a cataract, but you probably won't experience any problems with your vision until about 65. By 75, just about everyone has a cataract; and 50% of the people between 75 and 85 have lost some vision as a result.

Many generations have accepted poor vision in later years as an inevitable consequence of aging. But refinements in cataract surgery procedures and technological advances in lens replacement have changed this assumption dramatically, at least in the United States, where cataract surgery is the number one therapeutic surgical procedure performed on Americans 65 and older. Medicare pays $3.4 billion a year for 1 million of the 1.3 million cataract procedures performed annually.