Other Eye Diseases Matter

When I perform cataract surgery on a patient with macular degeneration, I inform them that the visual potential of the cataract surgery will be limited by the macular condition. With more than one eye disease, removing cataracts only addresses a part of the vision limitation.

In the February 2024 edition of the Journal of Cataract & Refractive Surgery, Dr. Mohammad Siddiqui and colleagues published a study that quantifies this. The fraction of eyes that had a major vision improvement after cataract surgery was only 39% in eyes with wet macular degeneration compared to 64% in control eyes.