Typical Cataract Surgery (Part 3 of 4)

Hello. This is Dr David Richardson, "The Cataract Coach" Welcome to the third segment of my four-part series on a typical cataract surgery. You'll notice that it's pretty clear except for on the side there is a little bit of haze. That's what we call the "cortical material." and in a second you'll see that I start removing that with two instruments. I use what's called a by bi-manual irrigation and aspiration set. Not everybody uses bi-manual Later you'll see what is more typically used which is called coaxial. But I find that the bi-manual gives me better control over the removal of the cortical material. So first I put in the irrigating handpiece and then up for the top of the video you see the aspirating handpiece. You'll notice that the irritating handpiece reflects light more and that the aspirating handpiece tip looks more like it's been sanded - and that's actually intentional The tip actually has a rough edge that allows me to polish the capsule itself. Not everybody will polish the capsule because it is very thin and delicate. So, it's a little stressful on the surgeon's heart to polish it. Here you can see that I am polishing it as I do believe that polishing the capsule results in a more controlled healing response as that capsule "shrink-wraps" around the lens and eventually holds the lens in position. So, this is relatively straightforward, but because you're dealing with such a delicate membrane it's not a step that everyone takes Now the eye is ready for some additional viscoelastic I'm going to have the patient look straight ahead at the light. Often times as the view clears up they start looking around. So I just inform the patient to continue to look straight ahead So in this case there was a little bit more polishing that I wanted to do so I'm going to go ahead and polish this. The next step you'll see I will place viscoelastic into the capsular bag and that frees up space that I will then use to insert the lens. So here's the viscoelastic. It's transparent so you can't really see what's going on here but I've just filled up the eye with a viscoelastic gel and this is going to let me place the lens in safely which I will show you in the next and final segment of "A Typical Cataract Surgery" www.David-Richardson-MD.com