My 12 year old Cocker Spaniel has cateracts, I have taken him to an Othamolgist who doesnt want to operate on him because 1) his age, 2) he has diabetas.  They said yes if he was younger at the cost of £2000 per eye, but no guarantee it would work.  I have heard that abroad there are eye drops for humans that disolve the cateracts has anyone heard of them if so can they give me more information.

Here you have the link to the human eye-drops:
http://smart-drugs.net/carnosine-eyedrops-article.htm

Info on canine cataracts:
HOW DO YOU TREAT CATARACTS?
There is no effective medical treatment for cataracts. However, when cataracts are caused by other diseases (e.g. diabetes, intraocular inflammations, etc.) the primary disease itself should be treated.

Best of luck.

Thank you for that I will look it up now.

Cheers

Try here

Hi Carol.
My advice to you would be to leave well alone. Canine cataracts are concidderably harder to treat than in humans and you would almost cretainly end up doing more damage then help. Professor Peter Bedford was one of the pioneers of cataract surgery and at the time when My Katy developed sugar cataracts as an elderly diabetic his answer to my question was that even if he removed them they would almost certainly be back in months.

Sorry if this is not what you wanted to here but. . . . . . . . . I know Peter would have done the job for me had it been viable.

Regards, John

Wasn't Peter given an award from Moorfields, the human eye hospital, for his work on cataracts, John?  I seem to remember him telling me that he'd been into their theatre to advise them, but of course, he wasn't allowed to touch humans! :(

Yes Val. He has also written a number of papers on the subject which have been published in the Lancet for use when operating on humans. A wonderful Opthelmologist and a great man! I trust him to operate on me anytime!

Regards, John

I agree with John - leave them alone. Dogs cope far better than we do with a gradual loss of sight. I know a couple of dogs in our breed (younger than yours) who had cataracts removed and were later pts because they simply couldn't cope with the sudden change in their vision which caused serious behavioural problems

Just to let everyone know how we have got on with "Bright Eyes" treatment.  Scampi has been having the drops for about two weeks now and we can definately see (excuse the pun) a difference, he's looking a round alot more and he is much more alert, doesn't bump into things quite as much as he did, so hopefully he will get even better. I will keep you all updated.  Caz

That's great news, Caz! :)