Effect of the Timing of Cataract Surgery on Complications in Patients With Bilateral Congenital Cataracts

Congenital cataract is a priority of Vision 2020: the Right to Sight, the global initiative to reduce the world's burden of avoidable blindness, because it is an important treatable cause of visual handicap in childhood throughout the world. Successful management of childhood cataract is dependent on individualized treatment strategies and postoperative supervision for adverse complication is also essential. The timing of surgery of childhood cataract depends on the etiology and on the degree of visual interference. Severe bilateral cataracts with significant obstruction of the visual axis must be treated and surgery is recommended as soon as possible after discovery.

Several previous studies claimed that ideally cataracts should be removed before 3 months of age, while the result of recent researches shows that too early intervention for cataract surgery seems aggressive and would cause serious complications, which might cause poor long-term visual outcomes. Therefore, in order to control childhood blindness and severe visual impairment in China, it is of great importance to ensure that pediatric patients with cataract could have good timing of surgery, postoperative rigorous supervision, accurate optical rehabilitation and comprehensive treatment of amblyopia.

In this trial, we aimed to compare the difference of postoperative outcome between surgical timing at age of 3 month and 6 month. Patients enrolled into the study will be followed for two year and will have study visits at 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, 12 months, 18months and 24months after cataract surgery.