Cataract surgery increasingly chosen as elective vision‑enhancement procedure

Cataract surgery, the world’s most common operation, is being performed electively before cataracts develop. Surgeons remove the eye’s natural lens and replace it with a plastic intra‑ocular lens through a tiny 2 mm incision, using ultrasound to break up the cloudy lens and local anaesthesia for an eight‑minute procedure per eye. Patients opt for the surgery to achieve lasting vision correction and avoid glasses or contact lenses. In the United Kingdom about half a million procedures are carried out annually, and roughly two‑thirds of older adults are expected to undergo the operation at some point. Private clinics offer a broader range of lens types than the NHS, prompting more people to pay for the procedure earlier in life. The trend reflects longer lifespans, higher expectations for visual quality and the procedure’s safety and speed.