My mom used to tell me about a similar procedure she would perform to help people with cateracts in Africa 30 years ago, so I'm a bit confused. I'm not saying t

My mom used to tell me about a similar procedure she would perform to help people with cateracts in Africa 30 years ago, so I'm a bit confused. I'm not saying this isn't awesome or special, just a bit curious what has changed to make it particularly special now. EDIT: So I asked her, it seems the main difference is the new lens they're putting in. With a cateract the lens is clouded and the essence of this procedure is cutting out that lens so that light reaches the retina once more. 30 years back they did not have new lenses to put in though, so (quote) "we would send everyone home with +10 glasses". She also recalls the expeditions into Nepal going into the mountains to operate cateracts 14 consecutive days full time even back then (takes a while to get up to 100.000 I suppose :]). So it used to be they were getting people who saw nothing to see something. Now they get people who see nothing to see really well, which is of course huge.