Cataract Removed from One Eye

Aphakia is a condition of the eye in which the human lens has been removed. The eye thus become extremely hypermetropic (plus lenses) in cases where it was near hemitropic (no lenses) before cataract extraction. In patients having one eye aphakic and the other near normal, it is impossible to prescribe spectacle lenses on account of gross magnification which ranges from about 35 to 40 per cent caused by the thick spectacle lens in the aphakic eye. This difference in the retinal image size cannot be tolerated as the fusion of such grossly dissimilar image is not possible, resulting in double image and, in extreme cases, may even lead to nausea and vomiting. In this case contact lens offers an ideal corrective solution because the magnification of retinal image size is reduced to about 10 to 11 per cent. With recent advance of the use of intraocular lens in cataract surgery use of contact lens in one eye can be avoided.