Flying after cataract surgery

[TomD]

For those of us "of a certain age" the original equipment lenses in our eyes tend to go out of specification and need to be replaced, aka cataract surgery.

I thought I would put down some things I learned recently after having maintenance on my left eye to return it to near original specifications.

First, I called the local Aerospace Medicine (ASM) office and discussed the options....they don't ask for a name. Since cataract surgery is possibly the most common surgery in the USA today, they were on top of the question. Bottom line is, as with any "major" medical procedure, you need to self report and provide documentation of the results. Yes there is a form for that, FAA form # 8500-7.

Form 8500-7 has a lot of what looks to be old school questions but your ophthalmologist or optometrist can fill it out after the surgery and/or the eye exam for new glasses.

The local ASM office allowed me to email the form in to their fax machine. Does not get any easier than that.

Talked to ASM flight surgeon on the phone and found that a single vision replacement lens lets you back in the air immediately after being cleared by the surgeon, assuming you have a current medical. If you go for one of the "toric" lenses for astigmatism or other fancy lens you are looking at 3-4 months post operation for return to flying status.

After surgery my left eye uncorrected was actually better than my right eye corrected....probably need to bring right eye up to original specification in the near future...and with new prescription vision was back to where it was when I was 30 yo. Astigmatism still there but very correctable.

Tid bit about "toric" or astigmatism correcting lenses. Seems as if they "get close" to correcting astigmatism but due to the precision required on the radial location of a cylinder lens, you may not get the astigmatism fully corrected. If you want full correction, you probably will need to wear glasses. My thoughts were why bother with toric lens if I need glasses to get the best vision with them. Lots of cataract "mills" really push the fancier lenses since they make more on them.

Bottom line the FAA is not a boggie man on this procedure and although you don't need to pre report it will save you time on your next medical as all you need to do is list the surgery and note "previously reported". I have no idea how the basic med procedure works on this.

The trees have leaves again !!

[Mountain Doctor]

+1

If you can see, you can see

Same applies to hearing aids. If you can hear, you can hear.

[ajak]

Welcome to the club, and glad it all turned out well! Your experience pretty much mirrors my experience from a couple of years ago.

A couple of things I found afterwards-

The acrylic lenses don't block nearly as much UV as natural eye lenses, so it's good to get in the habit of wearing UV blocking sunglasses, esp flying at altitude. I hadn't thought of that after my cataract surgery, and no one told me, but I found out accidentally when I noticed that I was actually seeing illumination from a blacklight in that eye!

The most common complication of cataract surgery is clouding of the part of the lens covering (capsule) that remains after surgery, called posterior capsule opacification. All sorts of new terms I'm getting to learn as I age. I didn't know that either at the time and started getting kind of freaked out as my eye started clouding up again. Luckily they have another kind of laser surgery called Nd:YAG posterior capsulotomy which fixes that. It took all of a couple of minutes, with instant results and was pretty inexpensive. The doctor cleared me to fly right away, and the longest part of it was having to fill out another 8500-7 form afterwards.

[vlafrank@comcast.net]

Um....................wait: there's a YouTube (?) clip making the rounds in which the young-ish pilot states that UV-blocking shades are not to be worn, because when a pilot's head is tilted, aforesaid shades tend to wash out, or otherwise blot out, the screens of the newest glass-panel instrument panels, rendering those instruments unreadable. He didn't actually say wearing UV blockers is prohibited, but he strongly counseled against doing so. Have you heard anything about that?

[gbarrier]

UV blocking and polarized are not necessarily the same thing.

[Chris in Milwaukee]

True. Polarization is a lense grinding technique to allow (theoretically) one plane of light through the glass. It does a great job at cutting glare from reflective surfaces. Modern electronic displays also have a polarized faceplate (LCD tech). At one angle, your glasses lens and your display lens will have perpendicular grinds, resulting in zero light going through (LCD is a backlit tech).

UV is a light frequency.

You can have (and I do) UV blocking polarized lenses. A huge number of non-polarized lenses are UV blocking. When flying, UV blocking lenses are definitely a good thing! Personally, I always wear polarized lenses, even when flying. But I don’t fly glass.

[Andy Young]

And be careful flying floats with polarized lenses. With glassy water, you’ll never see the surface; you’ll be looking right through it to the bottom. Makes the landing even harder to judge.

[Chris in Milwaukee]

Good advice. Hadn't thought about that. Floats are on my to-do list.

Time to start looking for a decent pair of glasses for flying, I reckon.

[TomD]

Flying glasses are often a personal decision and what works for one will not be the best for another.

Personally, my normal day to day glasses are progressive lens glasses with the new transition coating that somewhat turns color behind glass and/or plastic windscreens. The downside to progressives is the quite narrow area of best vision, but I am willing to put up with this in daily life due to my aversion to lined bi or tri focal glasses when walking around.

When flying, however, I want my full field of vision to be in focus. Spacial conflicts normally do not occur from things directly ahead. I, therefore, use glass G15 tinted lenses (not polarized) with an intermediate lined bifocal that allows me to focus both on my iPad on the yoke and the instruments. I may be picky but I think no other material provides the visual acuity of optical glass.

Interesting that my optician who has many pilots for customers immediately say "no polarization" when they hear the sunglasses are to be used for flying. I guess they have heard the message.

[ajak]

Here's a link to an FAA safety brochure on "Sunglasses for Pilots". It mentions some of the things which were brought up in this thread.

https://www.faa.gov/pilots/safety/pilot ... lasses.pdf

While I've also avoided polarized glasses for all the other reasons discussed, the safety brochure also mentions another factor which I hadn't thought of before: it may "mask the sparkle of light that reflects off shiny surfaces such as another aircraft’s wing or windscreen, which can reduce the time a pilot has to react in a “see-and-avoidâ€￾ traffic situation".

An interesting exercise is to pick up a cheap pair of polarized clip-on sunglasses (approx $10-15). You can clip them on to your existing glasses and see how it works before you go out and buy a pricey set of prescriptions. I've noticed that rotating mine about 45 degrees makes many computer screen displays almost disappear. Not good, as I'm surrounded by those while flying for work. And it makes the heated part of the windshield look like it's been sprayed with dark blotches of paint which move about randomly, depending on how I move my head. They are nice for sailing and fishing, though.

Tom- interesting to read about your experience with progressive vs bifocal lenses. I've been using progressive lenses for the last couple of years for both everyday use and flying, but the narrow area of clear vision has been annoying me. I thought I'd get used to it in time, but it's still annoying me, and I've been thinking about switching back to bifocals for flying, for exactly the reasons you mentioned.

[Old Piper]

(Tom- interesting to read about your experience with progressive vs bifocal lenses. I've been using progressive lenses for the last couple of years for both everyday use and flying, but the narrow area of clear vision has been annoying me. I thought I'd get used to it in time, but it's still annoying me, and I've been thinking about switching back to bifocals for flying, for exactly the reasons you mentioned.)

Hi Tom D., I have been using Progressive Lenses and Knowing I look straight out for scanning the skies from left to right, I didn't want to have to raise my head to scan the panel with a narrow ban for close reading. Therefore I asked the optometrist to raise the merging line on the glasses another 3/8" for reading the panel. This allows me to just lower my eyes, not raise my head to view all lower panel items. This works good in auto vehicle and at a desktop computer. (minimizes Neck aches.) The cost to do so was zero, when ordering glasses. It works great!
_________________

[TomD]

Old Piper said:

Hi Tom D., I have been using Progressive Lenses and Knowing I look straight out for scanning the skies from left to right, I didn't want to have to raise my head to scan the panel with a narrow ban for close reading. Therefore I asked the optometrist to raise the merging line on the glasses another 3/8" for reading the panel. This allows me to just lower my eyes, not raise my head to view all lower panel items. This works good in auto vehicle and at a desktop computer. (minimizes Neck aches.) The cost to do so was zero, when ordering glasses. It works great!

My optometrist located the bifocal line properly for me when I said "glasses for flying". Those practices that have a lot of pilot customers probably already know what you outline but asking is always a good idea. I had my power set so both my iPad on the yoke and instruments were in focus....I choose the iPad to be somewhat more clear since the small print on the chart needed more clarity than the relatively large numerals and letters on the instruments....mostly "steam gauges".

Shiny side up.

[andy]

I've been wearing and flying with progressive clear lenses and sunglasses for around 25 years. The technology has come a long way. About four years ago I switched to what they call "HD" acrylic lenses that are more precisely ground by a computer. It made quite a difference in sharpness and focus. The distortion at the edges is also almost imperceptible. Initially they didn't make HD sunglasses but two years ago they became available and I started using them as well. I couldn't get non-polarized HD sunglass lenses so I got the polarized ones. I haven't noticed any problems except that I have to rotate my iPad mini into portrait orientation to get it brighter. My Maule doesn't have a lot of glass in the panel but I've flown CAP Cessna 182s with Garmin G1000 flight management systems using the polarized sunglasses and haven't had any problems. The C185 that I fly for work has a Garmin GTN 650 and I don't have any problem using polarized sunglasses with it. Maybe avionics manufacturers know which direction sunglasses are polarized and they use the same direction for their glass panels. Apple probably never thought people would use iPads in flight and polarized them differently.

The downside of all this "HD" business is cost so I stopped changing lenses every year since my prescription hasn't changed in the last two years. I've been diligent about keeping my glasses in cases rather than in my pockets so they're not scratched up. I'm now working on year 3 for this set of lenses and I can still pass the 20/20 eye test that I have to take every year to maintain my Commercial privileges for work. The cost of the HD lenses is more reasonable when they last for 3 years.