TUESDAY, Oct. 22, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Cataract surgery could restore good vision to older people and by doing so cut their odds for potentially life-threatening falls, a new study finds. Folks who got the surgery had significantly lower odds for bone fractures and brain hemorrhages linked to falling compared to people with cataracts who didn't get the operation, researchers report.
The benefits were even greater than expected, said study lead author Caitlin Hackl , a medical student researcher at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. “The consistency of this association across multiple common age-related fragility fractures, even after controlling for osteoporosis, was surprising,” Hackl said. Her team presented the findings Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology in Chicago.
Hackl's team used a U.S. national database to track any history of falls among more than 2 million cataract surgery patients.
The patients were divided into two groups: Those who got a got a cataract surgery within 10 years of being diagnosed with cataracts , and those who did not. The Texas researchers made sure that certain factors -- osteoporosis, diabetes, low vision, blindness and retinal disorders -- were similar between the two groups. The data showed that rates of potentially life-threatening head injuries leading to bleeds were lower among those who underwent cataract surgery versus those who did not.
Folks who got the vision-restoring oper.