Question
It should be seen immediately by an eye specialist and managed within the first 24 hours of the event happening.
Subsequently, a follow-up consultation would help prevent the same problem from happening to the other eye or systemic disease.
This is an emergency and delaying treatment could lead to permanent visual disability.
It’s an age-related process but even juveniles and babies can develop cataracts at a much younger age. Probably 99% of cases are with patients over the age of 40. Cataract is usually an ageing problem commonly presented in older patients. Some are born with congenital cataract and usually this is due to some disease. For example, the mother has chickenpox during pregnancy and this causes some lens proteins in the eye to become faulty.
They are very different things, cataracts are a very common eye condition, while retinoblastoma thankfully is not a very common eye condition. It is a very serious condition, it is cancer and almost always in childhood in babies and children. You don’t need to treat cataract most of the time but retinoblastoma definitely needs some form of treatment, both visually and life-threatening. Totally different conditions.
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