TOnne Hathaway for years he lived with impaired visionwithout fully realizing how much the problem was affecting his daily life. Then the operation, and the surprise when he realized that the problem was serious. The actress told Popcastspodcast of New York Timesof having been “legally blind” in her left eye for about ten years due to a juvenile cataract. With which he had to deal for 30 to 40 years.
“I didn’t realize how much worse the situation had gotten until I had surgery and was finally able to see the full spectrum,” Anne Hathaway said. A situation that, in the end, has them caused “a lot of stress”. Today, he explained, he considers the possibility of seeing well “almost a miracle”, because the operation “just two generations ago would not have been conceivable”. But what what is juvenile cataract? What are the causes and what symptoms should not be underestimated?
What is juvenile cataract like Anne Hathaway’s
The cataract it is an eye pathology characterized by the clouding of the crystalline lens, the natural lens that allows images to be focused. When the lens loses transparency, vision becomes progressively blurredas if looking through fogged glass. And although it is often thought that this is an age-related problem, according to the San Donato Group Cataracts are not exclusive to old age. In fact, there is a so-called “juvenile” or “early” form, which can appear even before the age of 50.
The causes of juvenile cataracts
While for the senile form of cataract the second main cause Humanitas Saint Pius it is precisely the aging of tissues (and specifically the oxidation and aggregation of lens proteins), for juveniles the causes can be multiple. For example, the San Donato Group clarifies, «diseases such as diabeteshypothyroidism or hyperthyroidism, chronic eye infections or inflammation such as uveitis, ocular surgery, injuries or trauma to the eye, prolonged use of cortisone drugs or therapies such as chemotherapy”.
Then there are also risk factors linked to unhealthy lifestyles. These include smoking, excessive use of alcohol, diet poor or devoid of vitamins and excessive exposure to sunlight without eye protection.
Symptoms: When vision changes without pain
One of the most insidious aspects of cataracts is its slow and painless progression. The worsening is not always perceived immediately, because the brain tends to adapt to visual changes. The most frequent symptoms include blurred visiongreater sensitivity to frontal light (which dazzles even when it shouldn’t), doubled images, loss of sharpness of vision.
And sometimes, he explains Humanitas, a sudden improvement in near vision caused «by the myopization induced by the change in the refractive index of the lens». Just in case told by Anne Hathawaythe deficit had reached such a level as to fall within the definition of “legal blindness”, i.e. a situation of severe visual reduction which in the United States indicates, among other things, a visual acuity equal to or lower than 20/200 even with correction.
Anne Hathaway (Getty Images)
How common is early cataract
The juvenile form of cataract is much less frequent than the age-related one, but it’s not rare at all. According to data reported by San Donato Group, approximately 10% of cases overall cataract cases concern patients under 50 years of age. This is a minority share, but clinically significant, also because it tends to arise in subjects of full working and social age, with more evident consequences on the quality of life compared to the elderly population. In terms of surgical interventions, the Italian numbers confirm the impact of the pathology: they are performed approximately every year 600-650 thousand cataract operations overall in our country, making it the most frequent surgery ever in the ophthalmology field.
How to treat it
The only definitive treatment for cataracts is the surgery. The procedure consists of removal of the cloudy lens and in its replacement with an artificial intraocular lens. The operation is today among the most performed absolute in the ophthalmological field and, in most cases, allows significant visual recovery. In the initial stages, when the cataract is mild, it is possible to resort to temporary optical corrections, but there is no pharmacological therapy capable of reversing the process of clouding of the lens.
Can cataracts be prevented?
Cataract prevention involves the improvement of lifestyle. Humanitas recommends, for example, the use of sunglasses, but also a diet rich in fruit and vegetables, with foods rich in antioxidants natural in order to prevent the oxidation of the proteins of the lens. And then, given that diabetes is also among the causes, it is a good idea to control blood sugar levels. And then don’t smoke. Finally the advice is to «perform periodic eye checksespecially in the presence of risk factors, even in the absence of specific symptoms.”