Today, patients are increasingly undergoing cataract surgery earlier in life, and the procedure has become an extremely rapid and refined process: small incisions, quick recoveries, and typically, great visual outcomes. For well over a decade now, surgeons have been able to offer presbyopia-correcting intraocular lenses (IOLs), and with them, the option of spectacle independence for presbyopes. 

Modern cataract surgery has evolved from just cataract removal and IOL implantation into a refractive procedure. Most visual conditions, including myopia, hyperopia, presbyopia and astigmatism, can now be corrected through cataract surgery. 

Cataracts are pretty much unavoidable. About half of adults between 55 and 65 develop them, and after 65, that number goes way up.  Cataracts develop when the lens behind the colored iris becomes obscured, brown or yellow. Light is scattered by the lens before it can focus on the retina, and as a result, vision becomes blurry and colors muted.