What to expect DURING and AFTER your cataract and premium lens replacement surgery -2022

so you're scheduled or about to have cataract or premium lens replacement surgery everybody in your shoes is nervous apprehensive scared and that's normal but from our perspective this is our specialty we do this hundreds of times each month it's our specialty we have an outstanding team of nurses staff and eye surgeons that are going to make sure that your surgery goes well and your experience is very very smooth in this video we're going to describe what you're going to experience during surgery immediately following surgery the day after surgery the week after surgery and the month after surgery you'll find out what's normal what's abnormal what you should be worried about what you shouldn't be worried about what you can do and what you can't do after your surgery so we hope this video educates you and more importantly sets your mind at ease about the concerns you may have going into this process first topic what is your experience going to be on the day of your surgery you're going to arrive in our surgical center our nurses are going to check you in and start the educational process they're going to dilate your pupil give you a little tablet called valium it helps you to relax stay calm it makes you just a little bit sleepy a lot of our patients will fall asleep even during surgery or after surgery you'll be brought back to our operating room and you'll be laying down in a bed and you'll see a bunch of light it's the light from our microscope the surgery itself is painless we use eye drop anesthetic after 10 minutes you're done and you'll be wheeled out to our discharge area where our nurses will check your vital signs and then go over your post-op instructions one more time and you'll be given an eye kit inside this kit you'll have a pair of cool shades that you can wear but you're not required to wear after your surgery it's just when your pupil is dilated you may be more light sensitive and this helps to cut down on some of the light sensitivity if you think this is a good look and you want to wear them indefinitely after surgery be my guest if you don't ever want to wear them again you don't ever have to wear them again also in the kit you'll be given an eye shield and a roll of paper tape so when do you wear this eye shield you wear it to bed you don't have to wear it during the day most patients will want to wear it on the day of their surgery but you really don't have to wear it the main purpose of this ice shield is to wear it when you go to bed or you take a nap how do you wear this ice shield we take two pieces of tape from the roll of tape and think of the eye shield as a pair where the bottom of the pair is here and the top of the pair is here put a piece of tape at the top of the pear and at the bottom of the pear the top goes between your eyebrow and the bottom goes along your cheek at an angle like this you only need to wear this again when you're going to fall asleep or when you go to bed and it's designed to help prevent you from accidentally unknowingly rubbing your eye when you're asleep you don't have to worry this during the day how long do you have to wear this ideally wear it at least for the first few nights if you can't stand it if we can get two to three nights of wear out of this that's probably enough ideally if you can wear it for the first week wear it for a week and then you're done if you're wearing the shield the day of surgery you can remove it to instill the eye drops now what eye drops do we want you to take after cataract surgery well for starters on the day before surgery we'd like you to go to the grocery store and buy some over-the-counter artificial tears there's literally dozens of different brands i'll also show you in this image some common and high quality brands of artificial teardrops that you can buy generally you can buy a large bottle of artificial tiers for about 10 to 15 dollars in the grocery store we want you to use artificial tears because eye surgery and the drops that we instill to prepare your eye for surgery can be a little irritating to the eye the surgical procedure itself can make your eye a little bit dry so we want you to actually instill artificial tears after your surgery one drop every hour while you're awake for the first day on day two through day seven in other words the following week we'd like you to use the artificial tears at least four times a day to keep your eye moist and accelerate the healing process so you see better faster also the eye kit is the medicated eye drop that contains an antibiotic a steroid and a non-steroidal medication this drop is called p m b and it stands for prednisolone moxifloxacin and bronfenac which are the three key ingredients in this eye drop there's five milliliters of medication in this bottle we ask that you shake the bottle before you install it this is the most important eye drop for you to take after surgery we would like for you to use this eye drop three times a day for the first week after surgery and then one time a day for weeks two three and four again three times a day for the first week one drop a day for weeks two three and four so you basically take this eye drop for one month and then you're done now usually the healing process is complete after one month sometimes your eye will be a little bit sensitive a little irritated maybe it burns maybe it's a little light sensitive from time to time between one and two months after surgery if you experience that you can use this eye drop once a day as needed to alleviate any of that peculiar light sensitivity irritation stinging burning that you may experience between one month and two months after surgery this drop prevents swelling pain inflammation and infection after your surgery so it's super important for you to use it as directed now if there are five milliliters in this bottle how many eye drops are in this bottle there are 20 drops of medicine per 1 milliliter of volume so there's a hundred drops in this bottle so if you're using this eye drop three times a day for one week that's 21 drops and then if you're using it one time a day for the following three weeks that's an additional 21 eye drops so in theory you're only using 42 of the possible 100 eye drops in this bottle if you are responsible and meticulous about using this eye drop you may be able to use this eye drop for more than a month or you may be able to use this same bottle of eye drops for surgery to your second eye if you have surgery to your second eye shortly after surgery to your first die most patients will actually run out of this medication within a month on one eye why is that it's because most patients don't know how to put in eye drops they'll try and sprinkle one drop on their eye but they'll end up getting three drops on their cheek and one drop on the eye and so every time they try and use one drop they're actually using four and so they'll run through their medication much faster than desired so how do you put in eye drops in general let me show you the way i do it is i tilt my head back i'll typically use a magnifying mirror if you have a well-lit magnifying mirror it's tremendously helpful if you don't have that just use a mirror and tilt your head back you'll be looking into the mirror you'll pull down on your lower eyelid look up let gravity allow an eye drop to fall into the pocket formed between you the back surface of your upper eyelid and your eyeball i don't have a mirror but i think i got that one in if i had a mirror i'd have a visual way of assessing if the eye drop went on to the back surface of my eyelid or in that pocket created between my lower eyelid and my eyeball so that's how i would recommend you instill the eye drops there i think i placed one maybe two eye drops i didn't have a mirror but if i had a mirror i could place just one eye drop now is more than one drop at a time better than just one drop at a time no the tear film can only hold about one quarter of these eye drops at a time so if you put in two or three eye drops anything more than one drop or even half a drop is just extra and it usually flows onto your cheek anyway so just try and put one drop in at a time now if we've asked you to put in artificial tears every hour after your surgery what is the amount of time that we want you to wait after installing one eye drop such as the pmb and instilling an artificial teardrop like these we would want you to wait about one minute after the first drop before placing your second medicated eye drop into your eye now if you're one of these folks who takes other eye drops on a usual basis to treat an associated or unassociated medical condition of your eye such as eye drops to treat dry eyes allergies or glaucoma in most instances you can continue to use those eye drops as scheduled if you have any questions about that feel free to ask your surgeon if they want you to stop those eye drops during surgery after surgery and when you can restart them now i've already covered a lot of information is there written material that we give you of course this sheet will be included in your eye kit and it goes over all the eye drops that we want you to use and all the do's and don'ts additionally before surgery we'll give you this sheet which has coupons that'll help save you some money when you go to buy your artificial tears from the grocery store or the pharmacy what will your vision be like immediately after surgery is a crystal clear is it a miracle right away no it's not for the first few hours let's say for the first six to eight hours your vision's blurry it's weird you may see things with a pinkish or rose-colored hue you may see things quivering out to the side flickering lights flashing lights your eye may be red your eye may tear or water sting or burn your pupil will be dilated so you'll be more sensitive to light than average just don't have high expectations for good vision in the first eight hours after surgery typically the morning after your surgery after you've had a full night's rest your vision will actually be pretty solid it'll be 80 to 90 of the way it's going to become after your surgery over the next month your vision will improve an additional 10 to 20 percent above what it will be in the first day or two after your surgery just to emphasize your vision will not be normal it will be blurry foggy not clear not normal in the first day after surgery typically gets better overnight when we check you in the office for your day one follow-up your vision is usually pretty good sometimes it's great sometimes it's less than great but it's usually pretty good and we're just making sure that you're healing normally on the day after surgery checkup now let's go over the do's and don'ts after cataract surgery in the past people were told to be super careful and we still want you to be careful but what can you do after surgery you can look around if you see well enough you could read you could work at your computer you could watch tv you can use your eye using your eye will not affect the healing process or your surgical result you can wash your face you can take a shower when you take a shower and there's water flowing over you and water flowing over your face it's okay just close your eyes softly and if you want to wash around your eyelid just be very gentle don't mash real hard don't squeeze real hard so you can wash your face and take a shower as long as you're very gentle and cautious around your eye you can bend over you can pick things up you can carry things you can lift things what i typically tell patients is you can carry a full bag of groceries in each arm the day of or the day after surgery but if you're lifting anything just blink normally don't squeeze real hard and don't rub your eyelid can you go up and down stairs yes can you walk yes so you can do most activities if you're comfortable now keep in mind the day of surgery you took a valium so you may be a little woozy the day after surgery the valium lasts 12 to 18 hours and so you shouldn't drive the day of surgery you should kind of just relax at home do whatever you can at home but kind of be careful because the volume may make you unsteady a little woozy you may be a little bit more prone to a fall so just be cautious at home now the day after surgery typically the valium has worn off and if you see really well then you can get back for the most part to a normal schedule now on the first day after surgery if you feel like it's potentially unsafe for you to drive or go back to your normal schedule or go back to work we're going to check in the office the day after surgery and make sure your eye looks normal is healing normally and that your vision is normal for the first day after surgery if everything checks out then in all likelihood you can for the most part get back to a normal routine and a normal schedule if there's any doubt we'll let you know or if you ask us the question about specifics of what you can and can't do after surgery on your day after surgery appointment will inform you of what we feel is safe for you what are the things we don't want you to do after surgery the main two things don't rub the eye real hard don't squeeze real tight why is this the surgery we do is typically done with very tiny incisions these incisions seal without any stitch glue or artificial ingredients they seal on their own but if you put a lot of stress on these incisions by rubbing your eye squeezing real hard or bumping your eye it's possible for the incisions to leak and that could lead to problems so we don't want you to rub your eye real hard or squeeze real tight now quite often in the day after or the week after surgery if everything looks good you could get back to doing some light exercise as long as you blink normally don't squeeze real hard but if you have any questions about that again ask your doctor who's checking you on the day after surgery what about eyelid makeup we would want you to avoid makeup on your eyelid and mascara on your eyelashes for one week after surgery for two reasons the powder that's in the makeup floats in your tear film and if you squeeze rub or bump your eye theoretically it's possible for some of the powder in your makeup or mascara to make its way into your eye and that could cause some irritation secondly when you remove your eyelid makeup or mascara quite often you have to rub your eyelid really hard we don't want you to do that for the first week also if you wear sunscreen maybe avoid sunscreen on your eyelid for the first week after surgery what are some symptoms that may be of concern that we haven't discussed that would warrant a return to our office or at the very least a call to our office to potentially be seen by one of our doctors if your vision is doing okay and then all of a sudden it drops and becomes super blurry and that blur lasts for more than half an hour then that would be of concern if your eye is healing relatively well and then all of a sudden it gets a lot more red and your vision drops that would be concerning enough that we would want to check you if you have a lot of nausea or vomiting on the day of or the days after surgery call us we'd want to check you do you have to stop medications after surgery before surgery no you could take all your normal medications your oral medications before surgery the day of surgery and after surgery you don't have to stop any medications so patients who take like medications for controlling their clotting you don't have to stop them at all do you have to change what you eat before during or after surgery you can eat a normal meal the day before surgery you can eat a light meal in the hours leading up to your surgery you can eat a normal meal after surgery so there's really minimal change to your diet so we understand this is a big deal you're you're going to come in nervous and apprehensive but this is our world this is our specialty cataract and premium lens replacement surgery our whole staff is devoted to making sure that you get the best care with the best team top to bottom and that your experience goes really really well so i think that when you step into our office on the day of your surgery you'll be pleasantly surprised how smoothly and professionally and comfortably you're going to flow through this process you're going to be in our office for about an hour and a half two hours tops and you're gonna see better within one day after your surgery so thanks for entrusting us with your vision and your eye surgery we're gonna make sure it goes well if you have any questions about the process we're always available via phone you'll be giving your surgeon's cell phone number on their business card their email on their business card were fully accessible and available to you before and after surgery if you have any questions but we're going to make sure you have a great result that you're going to get the best possible care and we hope you have a great experience thank you and we look forward to helping you see your very best have a wonderful day and good luck

Channel: Shannon Wong, MD

Views: 633,522

Keywords: cataract surgery, laser eye surgery, lasik surgery, laser cataract surgery, what to expect cataract surgery, cataract surgery complications, panoptix lens, best eye surgeon, best eye surgeon austin, best ophthalmologist austin, best cataract surgeon austin, best cataract surgeon, cataract surgery risks, cataract surgery safety

Id: fXH7BYIIzNQ

Length: 21min 58sec (1318 seconds)

Published: Sun May 01 2022