Recent developments in cataract surgeryAs guest editor of this special series of the Annals of Translational Medicine (ATM), I would like to share with the readers at large the contributions from invited authors who provided their unique and expert perspectives on the important and critical topics of this focus series titled "Recent Developments in Cataract Surgery".Cataract surgery is the most common surgical procedure performed in medicine. Over 20 million surgeries were carried out worldwide in the 2015, including 3.6 million in the United States of America and 4.2 million in the European Union (1). The technology progress enabled cataract surgery to become the safest and most predictable eye surgery. However, the increase in life expectancy and quality of life result in rise expectations regarding the outcomes. Presently, individuals over 70 years of age still wish to maintain an active lifestyle, including driving a car and often performing sports. Cataract surgery is no longer a procedure to eliminate the obstacle in vision providing some restoration of vision. It became a refractive procedure to eliminate all refractive errors, including astigmatism, but also in many cases managing co-existing presbyopia. Thus, this is a field of many new ideas and new developments. We still can be better and there is a demand for techniques that are even more perfect. Longer life span brings some new encounters, including more surgeries performed on patients with dementia and other comorbidities related with ageing, including glaucoma and retinal disorders. Moreover, the anticipated duration of intraocular lens (IOL) in the eye has significantly increased, thus physicochemical properties and IOL endurance should allow the IOL to keep its optical properties for up to three decades.Congenital cataract is the leading cause of preventable blindness in children (2). Early surgical intervention may prevent deprivation amblyopia and result in good visual prognosis (3). Optimal surgical management includes microincision cataract aspiration combined with posterior capsulotomy, anterior vitrectomy and primary intraocular lens (IOL) implantation (4). Primary IOL implantation is usually performed in children older than 2 years of age. IOL implantation in children younger than 2 years of age remains a matter of controversy (5). The review by Bremond-Gignac and colleagues discusses recent developments in the diagnosis and management of congenital cataract.It is well known that postoperative intraocular inflammation is usually more severe in younger children and it might be explained by an immature blood-ocular barrier and an underdeveloped immunosuppressive microenvironment or anterior chamber associated immune deviation (6,7). Proper understanding of these mechanisms is pivotal for optimal management of inflammatory response to surgical stimuli (8,9). Postoperative complications arising from intense inflammation include formation of posterior synechiae, posterior capsule opacifications, and fibrous pupillary membrane. This, reinforced...
