Vision of the future

It starts slowly. Your vision is a little cloudy sometimes, like a smudge on your glasses that you cannot clean. When you drive at night, oncoming headlights seem bright or glaring. After a while the cloudiness worsens until it is difficult to see clearly at all. You can no longer read; driving becomes impossible. Soon you will lose your independence.

Cataracts affect the vision of millions of Europeans. Around one in five people aged over 40 can experience ‘cloudiness’ caused by the accumulation of proteins on the lens in their eye. Cataracts are responsible for 5% of blindness in Western Europe and an even higher proportion of cases in other parts of Europe.