الفهرس 
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Abstract
Visual impairment is a serious public health problem. Globally, of
the 7.33 billion people alive in 2015, about 36 million were blind, 216.6
million people had moderate to severe visual impairment and 188.5
million had mild visual impairment, (Bourne et al., 2017).
Cataract is the second leading cause of visual impairment and the
first of blindness globally (Song et al., 2018). In 2015, cataract is the
leading cause of blindness in 12.6 million and of moderate or severe
vision impairment in 52.6 millions. By 2020, among the global
population, the number of blind people because of cataract is anticipated
to rise to 13.4 million and the number of people with moderate or severe
vision impairment secondary to cataract is anticipated be to 57·1 million
(Flaxman et al., 2017).
Age-related cataract (ARC) is the most common cause of severe
visual impairment and blindness, (Xiang et al., 2018).
The precise mechanisms of ARC are not completely understood,
lens epithelial cell membrane damage is one of the pathogenesis of
cataract and high mobility group box-1 and nuclear factor-κB play vital
roles in its damage (Xu et al., 2018).
Aside from increasing age, DNA damage and malfunction of DNA
repair are believed to contribute to the pathogenesis of ARC (Yang et al.,
2018). Also, Oxidative damage plays an important role in cataract
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pathogenesis by influencing cell vitality and apoptosis (Xiang et al.,
2018).
Moreover, crystallin proteins, which are the most abundant
proteome components of the lens, may undergo extensive
posttranslational modifications causing lens opacification in cataract
(Zhang et al., 2018).
Cataract surgery is the most common ophthalmic surgery and may
be performed simultaneously with glaucoma or vitreous surgery in many
cases (Ibrahim et al., 2018). The gold standard of cataract surgery,
phacoemulsification and intraocular lens implantation is the most
commonly performed surgical procedure (Moschos et al., 2018).
Phacoemulsification and intraocular lens implantation can be safely
and successfully performed even in complicated eyes as in Vogt-
Koyanagi-Harada patients (Ji et al., 2018) and in eyes with wet agerelated
macular degeneration during the inactive phase of the disease
significantly improves visual acuity (Figurska et al., 2018).
The current prospective study included 90 ARC patients; 62
females (68.9%) and 28 males (31.1%) with non-significantly (p=0.093)
higher frequency of females among study population and male-to-female
ratio of 1:2.2.
The reported higher frequency of females among studied patients
go in hand with Vonor et al., (2016) who assessed the prevalence of
senile cataracts in a rural area in Togo and found women had cataracts
more often than men, with a female sex ratio of 0.63. Also, Kurawa.