How does Cataract in both eyes affect the way a child sees?
Cataracts can affect different children in different ways. Cataract usually causes blurring of vision. The more hazy the lens is the more blurred the vision will be. Most children with cataract in only one eye usually have good vision in the other. These children do not normally complain of reduced vision. If both a child’s eyes have cataracts they are much more likely to have serious visual impairment. Most young children who are born with cataracts in both eyes however feel their vision to be ‘normal’. At first they assume that everyone else has vision the same as their own, as they have never known anything else but their own visual world. They do not realise that other people see things differently. How blurred the vision might be depends on: • How hazy the lens is. • What part of the lens is hazy. • Whether the child has developed a ‘lazy’ eye. • Whether the eye has other conditions that might reduce vision. If only a small area of the lens is hazy, away from the centre, then the
