Classification of Cataract

Cataract is classified as under:

1. Cataract since birth-congenital cataract.
2. Cataract in the young-juvenile cataract.
3. Cataract in old age-senile cataract.
4. Cataract in diabetes and certain rare diseases of hormones, e.g. titan.
5. Cataract in radiation workers, workers on glass and iron furnaces.
6. Cataract due to the excessive intake of cortisones for systemic illnesses.
7. Cataract from eye injury, post-surgery of glaucoma and retina and other internal diseases.

Cataract occurs more in hot tropical climates, and where poverty, malnutrition and debilitating diseases prevail.

India has all these conditions; hence cataract blindness forms 50 per cent of the blindness in India. L has never been known to occur in the North Pole among Eskimos.

It is most essential that this common malady be managed with utmost precision and care. It will not be out of place to state here that the treatment of cataract is by surgery only and that the success of modern surgery with fully restored vision is almost 95 per cent.