OPERATIVE TREATMENT OF RADIATION CATARACT

Abstract

At the Memorial Hospital for the Treatment of Cancer and Allied Diseases, I had the opportunity to examine 112 eyes with radiation cataract and to operate on 25 of these at the Institute of Ophthalmology. Certain conclusions have been reached regarding the operative treatment in these cases, and it is this phase of the subject that will be presented in this paper. The clinical characteristics, the histologic structure and the other aspects of the subject will be given only as they are related to the operative treatment. In this report an effort has been made to include only cataracts that have unmistakably resulted from irradiation. The criteria have been as follows : A sufficiently large dose of radiation reaching the eye, the appearance of cataractous changes after the usual latent period of from two to three years, the location of cataractous changes in a characteristic manner in the posterior subcapsular region