Since the surgery, I wore very thick glasses to correct it. I switched to contacts in the early 80s (contact lens tech was barely viable by then) augmented with reading glasses.
Today I wear contacts to get to 20/20 or 20/30, and reading glasses for computer work or reading. My correction is around +8.25 or so for each eye.
This is very exciting news and I hope kids don't have to go through the pain of wearing super thick glasses growing up.
Congenital cataracts run in my family and, as luck would have it, I inherited the condition from my Dad. I had both my lenses removed when I was an infant in the mid/late 80's. I wore both contacts and glasses until I was 5, when I was switched to just contacts with monovision. My correction is a bit higher, around +13, to get me about 20/35.
Luckily my daughter didn't inherit the condition, but it was a major concern throughout my wife's pregnancy. It's good to know it may not be an issue if we ever decide to have another.
This is indeed very exciting.
[0] http://scottlburson2.blogspot.com/2016/01/lcd-backlights-and...
What drive me nuts about my glasses is that it effective took my peripheral vision away, making me seem way more clumsy and uncoordinated than I would otherwise have been.
Not all focusing happens in the lens. The eyeball fluid does malt of the work actually.
But when I had my eyes fixed the tech left too much scarring for me to benefit from that procedure. I do ask about it periodically just in case the situation changes.
Nature abstract: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v531/n7594/full/nature1...
Obligatory Nature paper DOI ident for sci-hub lookup: doi:10.1038/nature17181
Note: did the surgery at "Associated Retinal Consultants." I can't read this without getting too emotional, and am not sure if this is considered a totally new thing or if we just missed out on this possibility then.
I got cataract surgery in one eye a few years ago. I am much younger than the average patient. It's not as good as what you have naturally when you are young but it sure beats what you have with a cataract. In my case, the floater did become mostly unnoticeable within a year. It didn't really impede my daily life before that.
But as someone who had cataract surgery as a newborn, please don't fret about it too much. I don't know how old your son is or when his surgery was, but bilateral aphakia is something that has become more of an inconvenience than anything else. It certainly shouldn't limit his options in life. (Unless his heart is set on joining the military, like I was. But, as they say, I really dodged a bullet there.)
That isn't true.
Younger you are, more you have?
Guess they would have figured that out though.