Are Cataracts Affecting Your Senior’s Vision?
Left untreated, cataracts can eventually cause your elderly family member to lose her vision completely.
They’re a common problem for aging adults, but many people don’t know what exactly cataracts are and what can be done about them. It might be too late to prevent cataracts in your senior’s eyes, but you can make changes going forward that can slow them down a bit.
Elderly Care in Clark County VA: Senior Cataracts
Can Cataracts Be Prevented?
Many people who already know about cataracts want to know whether they can be prevented. A healthy diet, along with controlling other health issues such as blood pressure problems, might keep your senior from forming cataracts as quickly as she might have otherwise. Protecting your senior’s eyes by wearing sunglasses may also slow down cataract development.
Symptoms of Cataracts
Many people who have cataracts describe that their vision slowly gets cloudier over time. Your elderly family member might first notice that she has issues seeing well at night, either experiencing bad night vision or seeing a halo effect around bright lights. She can also start to become sensitive to lights, which can pose a problem either at night or during the day.
What Causes Them?
Cataracts can form after eye injuries, but they can also form because of aging. Proteins build up on the lens of the eye, making the lens thicker. The proteins gradually make the lens less transparent, which isn’t always noticeable at first. As time goes on, though, that decreasing transparency dramatically affects your senior’s ability to see.
Treating Cataracts
The most common treatments for cataracts involve changing your senior’s eyeglass prescription and paying attention to things like lighting while she’s reading and engaging in other activities. This type of treatment can help your senior to see adequately for years. Eventually, if her cataracts are significantly affecting her ability to see, then surgery is likely the only option left. Cataract surgery removes the cataract from your senior’s eye, leaving her field of vision clear again. Because cataracts can reform, surgery is usually one of the last treatments tried.
Elderly care providers can help you to spot problems such as cataracts earlier than you might notice them on your own. This is because they’ve got a lot of experience helping people just like your senior with all sorts of conditions. The sooner your elderly family member sees her eye doctor, the more likely she is to be able to experience clearer vision.
If you or an aging loved-one are considering hiring Elderly Care in Clark County, VA, please contact the caring staff at LivinRite Home Care. Call Us Today at (703) 634-9991.
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