When Can I Drive After Cataract Surgery?
The answer depends on the vision in your operated eye and whether your other eye has already been treated. The Transport Victoria and Austroads guidance does not set a fixed waiting period. In my clinical practice, most patients with good vision in the operated eye can drive within one to two weeks, subject to assessment at your post-operative review.
On the day of surgery itself, you cannot drive under any circumstances. You will have dilated pupils and may have a shield or pad over the operated eye, and you will need someone to drive you home. For a full timeline of what to expect in the days and weeks after surgery, see my guide to cataract surgery in Melbourne.
What Are the Visual Standards for Driving in Victoria?
Victoria applies the national Austroads Assessing Fitness to Drive standards. For a private licence, uncorrected visual acuity of 6/12 or better with one or both eyes allows an unconditional licence, and 6/12 or better with glasses or contact lenses allows a conditional licence. A licence is not issued if the better eye is worse than 6/24.
Between these levels, an optometrist or ophthalmologist can recommend a conditional licence after clinical assessment. I check your result against these standards at your post-operative visual acuity assessment. The full standards are set out in the Austroads Assessing Fitness to Drive guidelines.
Medical Review (Transport Victoria) makes licensing decisions case by case using these national standards. Visual field standards also apply alongside acuity, and a formal visual field assessment may be required in some cases, particularly where there is coexisting glaucoma or other visual field loss (Austroads section 10.2.2, Visual fields).
Commercial vehicle licence holders, including truck, taxi, and bus drivers, must meet stricter standards than private licence holders. I cover this in more detail below.
Whether you meet the standard is a clinical assessment I make at your review, not an assumption based on how surgery generally goes.
What Happens to Driving Between First and Second Eye Cataract Surgery?
This is the most clinically nuanced part of the driving question. After your first eye is done but before your second, you may have significant anisometropia, a difference in prescription between your two eyes. This can cause image size disparity, double vision, and difficulty with depth perception, even if the operated eye alone sees well.
Whether you can drive safely in this interval depends on the vision in your unoperated eye and the degree of anisometropia between the two eyes. A patient whose unoperated eye still has a mild cataract and a similar prescription to the new lens implant may drive comfortably in the interval. A patient with a large difference between the two eyes may find depth perception and judging distances genuinely difficult, which matters a great deal behind the wheel.
Because of this, when I anticipate significant anisometropia between a patient's two eyes, I schedule the second eye with a shorter interval, approximately one week, specifically to minimise this difficult inter-operative period. This is a deliberate part of my surgical planning, not an incidental scheduling decision.
Once the second eye is complete and both eyes are corrected, many patients can resume driving soon afterwards, once I have confirmed at review that their vision meets the standard. The anisometropia that made the interim period difficult resolves once both eyes are matched.
Do I Need to Notify Medical Review About My Cataracts?
Yes. Transport Victoria states that all Victorian drivers are required by law to notify Medical Review if they have a long-term, chronic health condition or disability that could affect their ability to drive safely, and that this “includes conditions affecting vision such as cataracts”. Notifying is the driver's responsibility.
The simplest way to notify is to ask your eye health professional to complete an eyesight report online for Medical Review, and I can complete this for you. Transport Victoria notes that most people who report soon after diagnosis continue to drive, though Medical Review may set requirements such as regular eyesight reviews.
If you no longer need glasses for driving after surgery, the corrective-lens condition can be removed from your licence. Your eye health professional needs to recommend this in writing to Medical Review, and I can provide that recommendation.
What About YAG Laser Treatment? Can I Drive Afterwards?
Some patients develop posterior capsule opacification, a cloudy membrane behind the lens implant, months or years after cataract surgery, which is treated with a brief laser procedure called YAG capsulotomy. YAG capsulotomy is performed with dilating drops, and you must not drive on the day of the procedure due to blurred vision from the dilation.
Vision typically improves within hours to days after the laser, and driving can resume once the dilating drops have worn off and your vision again meets the required standard. For a detailed explanation of this condition and the laser procedure that treats it, see the full guide to YAG capsulotomy and posterior capsule opacification at corneaeyedoctor.com.
Commercial Licence Holders: What Are the Additional Requirements?
Drivers of commercial vehicles such as trucks, taxis, hire cars and buses must meet stricter visual standards. Under the Austroads standards, an unconditional commercial licence requires uncorrected visual acuity of at least 6/9 in the better eye and at least 6/18 in the worse eye; meeting this only with glasses or contact lenses allows a conditional licence.
Transport Victoria notes that a driver with cataracts may sometimes be unable to drive a commercial vehicle while still being able to drive a private car, and that Medical Review and your eye health professional give case-by-case advice.
If you hold a commercial licence, I factor this into your pre-operative discussion and post-operative review from the outset, so that the documentation Medical Review requires is prepared without delaying your return to work.
For guidance on what to expect in the lead-up to surgery, including how I plan the interval between first and second eye procedures, see my guide to what to expect at your cataract surgery consultation.
Dr Ross MacIntyre BA (Chemistry) MD FRANZCO is a subspecialist cataract, corneal, and refractive surgeon practising in Melbourne. He completed subspecialty fellowship training in cornea, complex cataract, and refractive surgery at the Wilmer Eye Institute, Johns Hopkins University, and holds a public appointment in the Cornea Unit at the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital. He has personally performed 7,000+ cataract surgeries and is a RANZCO RACE Examiner since 2019, serving as Examiner in Chief for the Melbourne Clinical Examination.