Red eyes, blurry vision and stuff like that

Most people seeing a whitish thing growing across the front of their eyes imagine that it’s a cataract.

Actually, you would have to be a pretty good observer to see a cataract in your own eye.  That’s because the eye’s lens, the tissue that goes cloudy in cataract, sits behind the pupil, right inside the eyeball.  A quite advanced cataract may be seen as a slight greying of your pupil (rather than the normal black), but it wouldn’t generally be noticed.

The two most common things that are seen growing on the front of people’s eyes are either a pingueculum or a pterygium.

• A pingueculum is an accumulation of fatty tissue, that stays on the white of the eye, not getting onto the clear cornea.
• A pterygium is a growth of connective tissue that can gradually move across the front of the eye, in advanced cases right across the pupil.

Both are usually white in colour but my get inflamed.  Both can irritate the eye because they interfere with the normal wiping function of the eyelids.  Both are more common in people that spend lots of time outdoors exposed to UV, and in countries with higher UV levels.

Treatment

• Pingueculae are not normally treated, although they could be removed for cosmetic reasons.
• Pterygia are surgically removed once they get to a stage of interfering with the vision.  Historically there is quite a high rate of recurrence, and so a variety of surgical options are available to reduced the chances of it coming back.
• For either condition, lubricant drops may be helpful to reduce irritation when inflamed, and reducing exposure to UV and dehydration by wearing sunglasses outdoors is also advisable.

Pingueculae and pterygia, whilst being the most common things that grow across people’s eyes, are not the only things that can do that.  There is also a whole range of other growths, both benign and malignant, so if you’ve got something growing across your eye, it’s best to get it checked out.