The Pet Tree House - Where Pets Are Family Too : Cataract The Pet Tree House - Where Pets Are Family Too : Cataract
Showing posts with label Cataract. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cataract. Show all posts

Monday, November 23, 2020

Lifting the Veil: Canine Cataracts & Cataract Surgery


The word “cataract” derives from the Greek word for waterfall, and so is apt as the term for an opaque, whitened lens which impairs the passage of light (a more complete discussion can be read here).  The lens is essentially a bag of protein, with lens fibers residing inside a defined capsule (a modified basement membrane). Like cooking an egg white, changes in the structure and orientation of the usually-parallel lens fibers will cause light to reflect from the surface, instead of transmitting through to the retina. Cataracts are typically staged from incipient (<10%) to immature (10-90+%) to mature (complete, Figure 1) and hypermature (complete yet resorbing lens, with lens capsule wrinkling and crystalline refractive opacities present). Visual impairment can result from almost any stage of cataract (eg a small cataract in the axial, posterior lens capsule will be directly in the path of the most important central light rays), although obviously more complete cataracts elicit greater visual impairment.

To read more on this story, click here: Lifting the Veil: Canine Cataracts & Cataract Surgery



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