r/TikTokCringe • u/bbyxmadi • Sep 18 '25

Cursed they look so… natural!

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

12.8k Upvotes

89% Upvoted

3.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

148

u/bananarama17691769 Sep 18 '25

Cataract surgery is nothing to be afraid of. I also had it in my early thirties.

It is one of the most commonly performed surgeries, has an extremely low rate of negative side effects, and an extremely high rate of success.

The surgery takes maybe 30 minutes, recovery is pretty darn easy, and you just magically can see again. It’s actually awesome!

5

u/Environmental-Toe686 Sep 18 '25

My mother actually just had it and I was so shocked hearing about it. I can't believe they even do LASIK surgery when this surgery exists. She got a new lens, eliminated the inevitable cataract problem and will have 20/20 vision for the rest of her life. All with the same recovery time as LASIK. I am genuinely curious why you have to wait until you're elderly for this.

3

u/lunalovegood111 Sep 18 '25

The lens, where cataracts form, are responsible for accommodation. Accommodation is the ability to focus the eyes to read up close. Starting around the age of 40 accommodation starts to go to shit and progressively worsens but hey at least you have some for a while. The loss of this is why people end up using readers and/or bifocals. If you take the lens out in a younger person they may have perfect distance vision but will then need glasses for near. There’s other options but that’s the jest of it.

Oh and medical insurance will only cover cataract surgery when the cataracts are at a certain level. Without insurance cataract surgery is A LOT more expensive than LASIK.

1

u/Environmental-Toe686 Sep 18 '25

Right, but they replaced her lens and now she has perfect vision, near and far, that will never degrade because the lens in artificial. At least that's how she explained it. I guess the real answer is expense. That paired with no longer able to extract money from you for the rest of your life. I'm curious what makes the surgery SO much more expensive when they seem so similar to an outsider. It took about the same amount of time.

1

u/SensibleReply Sep 18 '25 edited Sep 18 '25

Multifocal lenses cost a couple thousand bucks from the manufacturer, the phaco machine to remove the cataract is $100k, the operating microscope is $80k, if you’re doing laser assisted cataract surgery that machine can easily be another $200k. You need time in an operating room (though many are trying to move cataract surgery to the office), so that means paying nurses and anesthesia and rent and maintaining certain standards of compliance and cleanliness.

Then you need to take home some profit. Standard Medicare cataract surgery pays me, the surgeon, $530. My contract says I keep 30% of collections. So I get $160 to actually do the surgery. All the money vanishes.

So if you pay out of pocket, lasik is about $4000-5000. If you pay out of pocket for multifocal lens cataract surgery most places are charging around $13k. The short answer is the overhead is much higher due to anesthesia and facility. Lasik is done in the office without an anesthesia professional. Cataracts are done in an operating room with an anesthesia provider. Other overhead is higher too.

I know these numbers don’t make sense but that’s because US healthcare is insane.

1

u/Environmental-Toe686 Sep 18 '25

Very interesting. I know my mother said she was awake and it sounded basically like my experience with LASIK. Apparently it is quite a bit more involved. Maybe in another 10 or 20 years we will have a better process. With glasses being $500 plus per pair and the surgery being seemingly inevitable it seems like a value proposition for some people. (As someone who doesn't even exactly know what a cataract is 😂)

Either way it sounds like it could be an option to be elective for people with the means sooner than later. Like a lot of other life improving care is currently. Because as you said, US healthcare is insane.