Dr Rajesh Rajpal on Eye Health Implications of Visual Needs in Younger Populations

With visual needs rising substantially in recent years, eye conditions such as cataract have been shown to be more impactful at an earlier age, said Raj Rajpal, MD, chief medical officer, global head of clinical medical affairs, Johnson & Johnson Vision.

Transcript

Can you speak on the growing prevalence of cataracts in younger populations?

I wouldn't say that they're necessarily being noticed at an earlier age, I think it's just more impactful at an earlier age because of our visual needs. So, certainly all of the types of conditions we've talked about that can contribute to cataracts at an earlier age, we still need to watch for.

Again, whether they're medical causes, trauma, or medications as examples, but because of our greater visual needs, we are finding that we're doing cataract surgery at an earlier age because patients’ vision is impacting their life and that's when we primarily choose to perform cataract surgery.

It’s when a patient's vision is impacting their daily functioning, and therefore then we can, by cataract surgery, remove the natural lens, the cloudy lens of the eye, and implant an intraocular lens that makes up for the power. And then we have different options in how we select those intraocular lenses and what we do in cataract surgery.