If you have age-related macular degeneration (AMD), you don’t have to worry about getting worse after cataract surgery, based on information from a big study sponsored by the National Eye Institute (NEI). Researchers studied dietary supplements to see if they could slow down AMD in a 5-year study. AMD damages the part of the eye that helps us see, called the retina, and is a common reason people lose their vision. Cataract surgery is a common procedure to remove cloudiness in the lens of the eye. The NEI is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
According to Dr. Emily Chew, the director of the NEI Division of Epidemiology and Clinical Applications, the results of this study will help people with AMD and their care providers make more informed decisions about whether to undergo cataract surgery. The study’s findings suggest that people don’t need to be afraid of worsening their AMD by having cataract surgery.
Dr. Chew and her team analyzed the data from 4,553 participants in the AREDS2 study to see if there was a link between cataract surgery and the progression to late-stage (advanced) AMD. They only included participants who didn’t have advanced AMD at the start and hadn’t had cataract surgery. They compared participants who later got cataract surgery with similar participants who didn’t have the surgery.
The researchers discovered that having cataract surgery did not increase the risk of developing advanced AMD, compared to eyes that didn’t have the surgery. They used several criteria to determine if someone had advanced AMD, including changes in the retina and treatment for the condition.
Dr. Chew noted that the findings from this study align with the typical cataract surgical techniques used in the United States today. Specifically, the use of phacoemulsification, which involves breaking the lens into small pieces, causes less damage and inflammation than older techniques. This could be the reason why previous studies found an association between cataract surgery and the progression to advanced AMD, while this study did not.