Complications of Cataract Surgery

Complications of Cataract Surgery

Retained Lens Fragments
As people age, the lens in the eye becomes opacified or cloudy, which produces a cataract. Cataract surgery aims to replace the cloudy lens to reverse vision loss caused by this process. Cataracts can also occur as a result of trauma and medical conditions, such as diabetes.

In most cases, cataract surgery is an uneventful procedure, leading to no complications. However, some individuals, sometimes due to an underlying propensity for a complication (i.e., previous trauma, advanced cataract), the cataract cannot be removed in its entirety, and fragments remain in the eye. Sometimes these fragments travel to the back of the eye, in the vitreous cavity, where they cannot be removed using routine cataract surgery instrumentation.