What Can and Can't You Do After Cataract Surgery?

Cataract surgery takes about fifteen minutes. The recovery takes a few weeks, and most of the questions I get in that time are the same ones: can I drive, can I shower, can I go to the gym, when can I swim. So here’s the whole list, with the timeframes I actually give my patients. These are the same rules that are in the instruction book you’ll go home with, and in the video the nurses show you in recovery.

One thing before the list. The single most important part of your recovery is the drops. Everything else on this page is secondary to using them exactly as instructed.

The first few hours

You’ll go home with a clear plastic shield taped over the eye. Leave it on for two hours, then take it off and start your drops. Your vision will be blurry, and that’s completely normal. Eat and drink as you normally would, and have a rest, because it’s been a big day even if it didn’t feel like one.

The eye will feel scratchy and irritated and it’ll water. As the anaesthetic wears off there may be some mild discomfort, and paracetamol is fine for that. Wear the shield when you sleep for the first three nights, so you can’t rub the eye without realising. When you wake the next morning the lids may be a bit stuck together. That’s normal too. A fresh tissue moistened with cooled boiled water cleans them gently.

What you can do, and when

Read, watch television, use your phone and computer: straight away. None of these harm the eye. Your vision will be blurry for a day or two, so you may not enjoy them much, but there’s no restriction.

Shower and wash your hair: from day one. Do it exactly as you normally would, and keep your eyes closed when you put your face up to the water. If soap and shampoo never bothered your eyes before the surgery, they won’t afterwards.

Drive: usually within one to two days. As soon as your vision is back to normal and the eye is comfortable, you can drive again, provided you meet the usual legal requirements. The one firm rule is that you don’t drive the day after surgery regardless of how well you think you can see, and if your review is the next morning, someone else drives you to it.

Exercise and get back to normal activity: after 72 hours. Walking, the gym, running, cycling, golf, pickleball, bowls, all fine from day three as long as the eye stays clean. Contact sports wait four weeks.

Go outside: any time, and you don’t need sunglasses. You may find bright light startling for a few weeks. Your eye had got used to the dull, yellowed view through the cataract, and now it has a perfectly clear lens in it. Sunglasses are fine for comfort, but the eye doesn’t need them for protection.

Garden: after 72 hours, with a little care. The rule is that the eye stays clean, so keep soil, dust and mulch away from your face and wash your hands before you put drops in.

Fly: once your first review is done. Nothing about modern cataract surgery is affected by cabin pressure. The practical point is that you should have had your review and be settled on your drops before you leave, and you’ll need to take the drops with you.

Get new glasses: at five weeks. Depending on the lens you’ve had, you may or may not need glasses afterwards, and your optometrist should wait five weeks for the eye to settle before measuring you. In the meantime a pair of plain +2.00 or +3.00 readers from the pharmacy will get you through, but please don’t stay in them. The lens in your eye is a beautifully engineered piece of optics and cheap readers with plastic lenses will limit what it can do.

What you can’t do, and for how long

No swimming for four weeks. Pools, the ocean, spas, all of them. This is about infection, and it’s the one rule on the page I don’t bend on.

No eye makeup for one week. Mascara, eyeliner and eyeshadow wait seven days. Foundation and lipstick are fine from the start.

No rubbing the eye for four weeks. This is why you sleep in the shield for the first three nights. If you do rub it by accident, don’t panic. It only matters if it causes significant pain or a drop in vision.

No driving until your vision is back to normal, and never the day after surgery.

The things that surprise people

A few things happen after cataract surgery that nobody warns you about, so I’ll warn you now.

Everyone gets dry eyes. Absolutely everyone. It rarely feels dry, because the surgery disturbs the nerves on the surface of the eye, so instead you notice vision that fluctuates, clears for a moment after a blink and then blurs again, eyes that feel tired and heavy and lids you just want to close, and often watering, which is the eye making too many thin, salty tears instead of the balanced oily ones it needs. It’s worst three to six weeks after surgery and lasts eight to twelve weeks. The lubricating drops are the treatment. Use them as instructed for the first month and then two or three times a day for another two to three months, and the more you use them the faster it settles. If you had dry eyes before surgery, or you have rosacea, or you’re a woman past menopause, you may need more than the standard course, and that’s worth telling me about.

A flickering light at the edge of your vision. Very common for a few weeks, and it settles.

Your floaters seem worse. They aren’t. You’re just seeing them clearly for the first time in years, and your brain will tune them out again.

The gap between eyes. If your glasses were strong, the weeks between your first and second eye can be awkward: one eye sees well without glasses and the other still needs them, and the mismatch can make you feel a little unsteady. Some people take the lens out of one side of their glasses, some go without. Whichever suits you is fine, and it resolves the moment the second eye is done.

Your drops, briefly

You’ll be given three: an anti-inflammatory once a day for 28 days, a steroid anti-inflammatory four times a day for 28 days, and lubricating drops four times a day for 28 days and then two or three times a day for two to three months. Leave five minutes between different drops, keep using any glaucoma drops you were already on, and don’t worry if some of them sting for the first few days. There’s a tick sheet in the instruction book so you never lose track. When you run out of lubricants, any of the good over-the-counter ones from the pharmacy will do, and they’re all slightly different, so try a couple and see which you prefer.

When to call

In the first two weeks, if you develop significant pain or a drop in vision, call the rooms on 07 3239 5000 during business hours or the after-hours number in your instruction book. I try to be available for every emergency, and if I’m not, the Mater Public emergency department will help. Everything else, the scratchiness, the watering, the fluctuating vision, the flickering, is expected and will be looked at when you’re reviewed.

Watch it, and take it with you

This is the video the nurses show you in recovery, which covers everything above:

And the instruction book, with the drop tick sheet, is here to download:

If you’d like the day-by-day version of how the eye heals, that’s in cataract surgery recovery: a day-by-day timeline, and if you’re still deciding about surgery, the cataract surgery page covers the operation itself, including the fact that you can be asleep for it.