Surgery and Recovery

Get details about what will happen on the day of surgery.

DR. JEFFREY MARTIN: On the day of cataract surgery we meet at the surgical center. The admitting nurse will meet you in the waiting area and she will prepare you for surgery. At the surgical center, you stay in your own clothes. We give you IV sedation to relax you. I tell patients it's similar to a colonoscopy, so you're very relaxed. You're lying on the bed of the operating room table and all you see is a white light. It's not painful or scary. I tell patients that you don't see me coming. People are often worried about that. We then give you numbing eye drops which numb the surface of your eye. I do not routinely use injections, stitches or even an eye patch afterward. Through a tiny incision I use high speed ultrasound to gobble out the cloudy lens. We then replace it with an implant which sits in the capsular bag of the eye, which was the original place that your cataract or cloudy lens sat. The entire procedure is quick and usually takes around ten minutes. With cataract surgery you go home to the setting of your comfortable home on the same day. You should not have significant pain or discomfort. You may have blurry vision for a day or two.