What happens during cataract surgery at the Florida Eye Institute?
Before surgery, you may receive some medication to help you relax. At the Florida Eye Institute, we use local anesthesia for cataract surgery. An intravenous is started and then just the eye is numbed, usually with eye drops (topical anesthesia). The patient remains awake but feels no pain. Many patients are so comfortable they doze off to sleep. Blood pressure, pulse rate, and heart tracing are monitored by our on-staff anesthesia staff. In the operating room, the area around the eye will be cleansed and sterile drapes will be put over much of your face. You will be provided with plenty of oxygen to enable you to breathe easily under the drapes. You do not need to worry about blinking or seeing out of the eye being operated on because the local anesthetic used to put the eye to sleep prevents this. Our surgeons use a powerful surgical microscope and precision microsurgical instruments to enable them to operate on the delicate structures within your eye. Surgery will take approximately
