Cataract Surgery in Albany & Saratoga NY

Many patients find that as they age their vision is not what it used to be: Fine print is harder to see, nighttime driving or driving in the rain is unpleasant due to glare from car headlights. Perhaps even with your most recent glasses prescription your vision is not what you expected or wanted it to be. Perhaps the change in your vision is due to cataracts.

How Do Cataracts Affect Your Vision?

Cataracts are a physical change to the lenses in our eyes. These lenses focus light onto the back of the eye allowing you to see the world around you. But as we age, the proteins that make up the lens began to clump together, decreasing the amount of light that can pass through the lens. Because of this, patients may experience, halos, excessive glare when looking at lights, reduced contrast sensitivity, difficulty reading print materials or difficulty driving at night or in the rain. Untreated, cataracts can cause legal blindness, severely impacting one’s visual freedom and quality of life. Thankfully, cataract surgery is a highly successful operation that can permanently treat cataracts.



In the past, cataract surgery could only correct your vision at a distance, meaning you wore glasses afterward nearly some or all of the time. It could also not fix other eye conditions such as astigmatism, which is when the cornea is misshapen, or glaucoma, which is when the pressure in the eye is too high. However, modern-day cataract surgery, performed as an outpatient procedure, gives you options to correct astigmatism, reduce or eliminate your dependence on glasses for both near and distance vision, and reduce the need for glaucoma drops.

Cataract Surgery in Schenectady NY

If you or a loved one are deciding or have decided that cataract surgery is the right option for you, talk to our eye doctors: Dr. Mabel Cheng, MD and Dr. Nicole Lemanski, MD. Serving patients in Albany, NY; Schenectady, NY; Troy, NY and Saratoga Springs, NY, our eye physicians and surgeons utilize the best and most modern diagnostic equipment for eye surgery including cataract surgery. These advanced imaging devices in conjunction with our highly experienced physicians, allow for the correction of many eye conditions at the time of your cataract surgery, including glaucoma, astigmatism, and your reliance on glasses for some or nearly all of your visual needs.

We would be happy to discuss any of the following options with you:

• Femtosecond “bladeless” cataract surgery and wavefront aberrometry, for precision computer guided cataract surgery.
• Monofocal lens implants for correction of distance or near vision.
• Multifocal and Accommodative lens implants for distance and near vision correction.
• Toric lens implants for patients with large amounts of astigmatism.
• iStent implants for the treatment of mild glaucoma and cataracts at the same time.

Call our office today to learn more about your options and schedule a pre-operative consultation.

Cataract Surgery Options:

This lens implant will replace the cataract and restore light to the back of the eye. For patients who do not have astigmatism (a misshaped cornea), this lens results in good distance vision without the need for glasses. Glasses will, however, still be needed for up-close activities, such as reading, eating, and viewing your car dashboard.

If a patient does have astigmatism, this lens implant will not correct it, requiring the patient to permanently wear prescription glasses at all times for good vision.



To maximize visual potential, if the patient has astigmatism the astigmatism should be corrected. However, because there are different degrees of astigmatism (mild, moderate, severe), a thorough pre-operative evaluation is needed. If mild amounts of astigmatism are detected, we recommend the patient elect to have a limbal relaxing incision (LRI), either done with a diamond blade or with a femtosecond laser. For patients with moderate to severe amounts of astigmatism, a Toric lens or Accommodative lens should be considered.

For patients with significant degrees of astigmatism, a Toric lens is highly recommended as a baseline option. Toric lenses are designed to optically cancel out the astigmatism in a patient’s cornea. In most instances, this results in distance vision that is sharper and clear than what is possible with glasses. However, over-the-counter readers will still be needed for up-close activities, such as reading, eating, and viewing your car dashboard.



If a patient has a significant degree of astigmatism yet is looking to get away from glasses for most, if not all, of their activities, a special toric accommodative lens should be considered.

Utilizing an advanced concentric ring design, multifocal lenses allow patients to see at multiple distances: up-close, intermediate, and far away, usually without the need for any glasses. For patients looking to be free from glasses and readers for most daily situations, the multifocal implant presents as a great option.



Multifocals work best in pairs and also when a patient’s eyes have very little astigmatism. If mild amounts of astigmatism are detected during pre-operative evaluations, it should be corrected with a limbal relaxing incision done with either a diamond blade or a femtosecond laser. In very specific instances a special multifocal lens can be utilized with patients with moderate degrees of astigmatism. However, should the patient have more severe degrees of astigmatism, an accommodative lens should be considered as these patients are not candidates for multifocal designs. Furthermore, if a patient does many activities in low lighting conditions for extended periods of time, such as driving at night, an accommodative lens implant should also be considered.

The most advanced lens design, the accommodative lens implant mimics the natural movements of the human lens giving a natural range of vision over multiple distances; up-close, intermediate, and far away, usually without the need for any glasses. For patients looking to be free from glasses and readers for most daily situations, the accommodative lens implant presents as a great option.

Accommodative lenses work best in pairs but can also be used under a variety of astigmatism situations. If mild amounts of astigmatism are detected, it should be corrected with a limbal relaxing incision, done by either a diamond blade or a femtosecond laser. If moderate or severe amounts of astigmatism correction are detected, a special toric accommodative lens can be used, giving patients with high degrees of astigmatism the benefits of a full range of vision. Furthermore, for individuals that work in low lighting conditions, the accommodative lens implant enhances contrast over multifocal designs.

The most cost effective means by which astigmatism is corrected. By utilizing 138,000 data points from our anterior segment tomographer (performed during your preoperative evaluation), a highly accurate 3D model of the eye can be created to examine the unique geometries that create your astigmatism. In conjunction with a special geometric calculator, your doctor can determine how to accurately correct your astigmatism.

Operating at a speed of one millionth of one billionth of a second, a femtosecond laser system is a highly sophisticated way of performing cataract surgery. Instead of the doctor performing all portions of the cataract surgery by hand, the doctor uses a computerized surgical system to perform some of the most critical steps of cataract surgery. There are three key benefits to using the femtosecond system that patients should know about:

1. Highly accurate astigmatism correction: In situations where a diamond blade limbal relaxing incision is not accurate enough to correct a patient’s astigmatism, a computerized laser approach is recommended.
2. Softening of dense or specific kinds of cataracts: For patients that have very dense cataracts, or have had cataracts form in an usual way, a femtosecond laser can be used to soften and precisely break apart the cataract. The result is a cataract surgery with a reduced risk of complications in these specific instances.
3. Superior corneal protection: For patients that have pre-existing diseases with the cornea or have corneas that cannot tolerate surgery as well as others, a femtosecond laser provides a gentler cataract surgery, minimizing the stresses on a compromised cornea.



As the Capital Region’s only certified physician on both Femtosecond Laser Platforms, we are proud to have Dr. Cheng offer these technologies to our patients.

Used by your surgeon at the time of your cataract surgery, ORA allows for the best post-operative outcomes possible by providing your doctor the ability to precisely measure dimensions of your eye as well as the position of your intraocular lens. The length and dimensions of the eye are very important to your surgeon and influence which power of implant is placed in your eye, and your subsequent vision afterward. ORA is recommended for patients that have had prior cornea or refractive surgery (e.g. LASIK, PRK, RK), or patients who are having a toric lens implanted. While ORA is not needed in all cases, your doctor will let you know if ORA is recommended in your particular case.

Traditionally, most patients need to take two to three eye drops several times a day before and after their cataract surgery. For patients that have difficulty with eye drops or are not able to self administer eye drops, reduced drops cataract surgery presents as a viable alternative. With reduced drop cataract surgery, the doctor injects a long acting form of medication into the eye at the end of surgery instead of the patient self administering drops each day. In many instances patients require only one drop, or none at all. Ask your doctor if you are a candidate for reduced drops cataract surgery.

A device smaller than Lincoln’s eye on the US penny, this special stent is used to lower pressure inside the eye in patients diagnosed with Glaucoma, reducing or eliminating the need to use pressure reducing drops. This is especially helpful for patients who have difficulty in self administering their drops or are unable to do so altogether. As the Capital Region’s only comprehensive ophthalmologists specializing in premium lenses and placement of the iStent, we are proud to have our physicians Dr. Cheng and Dr. Lemanski offer this surgical option to our patients.