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Understanding Cataracts

What can I do to prevent cataracts?

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Laura D. Cook
Assistant Professor of Opthalmology, University of Virginia-Department of Opthalmology
www.healthsystem.virginia.edu  
434-924-5485

The Ophthalmology Residency Training Program at the University of Virginia was separated from Otolaryngology in 1947. Since 1978, it has been under the leadership of a full-time academic faculty. The Department currently serves as the ophthalmic referral center for central and western Virginia and parts of West Virginia, North Carolina and eastern Tennessee.

What can I do to prevent cataracts?

The lens of your eye functions very much like the windshield of your car. Laura D. Cook, M.D., Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, explains how cataracts affect your vision.

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Host: What can I do to prevent cataracts?

Dr. Laura D. Cook: Your options are limited in terms of prevention. If it's associated with a disease process like diabetes, controlling your blood sugar to try and prevent these kinds of complications or if the complication of an early cataract will be helpful and decrease earlier cataract formation or necessitate cataract treatment earlier. In terms of steroid use, limiting steroid use to patients who truly need it for poison ivy, for sun burns, for things like that, but there are many patients who steroids are just an amazing drug and they treat the condition and then we treat the side effects if it's necessary, and then lastly, the easiest thing you can do is wear sunglasses. It's been shown that sun exposure accelerates cataract formation and it's a cumulative exposure. Everybody is going to develop cataracts as they age, but they may develop at a younger, the more sun exposure there is and so in terms of sunglasses, wearing them at a young age and being consistent about using sunglasses with UV protection is important.

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