How does the lens of the eye change with age?
The lens loses its clarity as well as its focusing power. The lens of the eye is as clear as water when we’re young. It’s also very flexible and is able to accommodate a great amount. Every year the lens becomes slightly cloudier (like adding a drop of muddy water to a glass of water) and the lens becomes less elastic and some of its near focusing ability is lost. After age 40, as we progressively lose the near focusing ability due to presbyopia, we tend to hold things further away in order to read them. Other more complex changes happen as well as the human lens hardens and ages, such as an increase in spherical aberration and other distortions, with a resultant decrease in the image quality. At what point do I need cataract surgery? There is no single objective test to determine the need for cataract surgery. The final decision for cataract surgery is made by the patient and depends on how much the decreased vision from the cataract is bothersome. Doing cataract surgery at an earlier
