Flickering side-light after cataract surgery. Causes?

Hello everyone,

I wrote before on this portal and have seen other people complaining about this symptom, side-light flickering, so am going to write again.

Symptoms

It's always a side flickering, never frontal, and usually at a specific angle. It's caused by strong or relatively strong light coming from the periphery into the eye, usually from the outer side (like a window during a sunny day) or the upper side (ceiling reflectors). Stronger is the light from the side, stronger the strobe-effect inside the eye. If the light is softer, it's perceived like a little flickering of the light source. It doesn't depend on the pupil aperture: it appears with strong light and relatively small pupil too (a sunny day, in the shops). Many times it's enough to wear sunglasses to let less light inside the eye and stop the debilitating phenomena, so the light must be still relatively enough strong to cause this flickering.

The cause

People say it's the lens' squared, truncated (not rounded) edges that reflect the light inside the eye like a reflector. The flickering is strictly correlated to the tiny movements of the eye (called saccades). During the night, especially in younger patients, if the pupil is wide open and some light comes from the periphery, one can notice a flickering half circle (usually called edge-glare). In fact, dilating eye with drops (before an eye exam), it makes the flickering very strong. I can perceive the entire lens reflecting: an entire circle (lens' edges); I can even see the light beam coming from the ceiling reflector right inside my eye.

So, making the pupil very small could stop this flickering, since the light does not hit the edge? Oddly enough, pupil constriction drops (alphagan) helps for night light phenomena but it doesn't help much for the flickering. A doctor told me that it's not necessary for the light to hit the edge but it's enough to hit the lens producing edge reflections. So why the light must comes only from the side?

Wearing contact lenses, even gas permeable (harder) does not help either, so I don't think it's related to the corneal issues, like astigmatism, corneal transplant, diseases or scars.

I have two more options (I don't believe they are the main cause, but worth being mentioned):

1. IRIDODONESIS (jiggling of the iris after the cataract surgery; check video on youtube)

   Since the flickering is always related to eye movements, maybe it could be the wobbling of the iris causing this problem? (it could stop after dilating the pupils but, as I said, it makes the flickering even stronger).

2. NEGATIVE DYSPHOTOPSIA

   I don't perceive any darkness in my periphery but what if this flickering could be a very small negative dypsotopsia? A disco strobe effect is actually a light-dark-light-dark phenomenon.

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