Objective To investigate the effect of micro-incision phacoemul-sification on cataract patients and its effect on interleukin (IL)-6, tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), and epidermal growth factor (EGF) expressions in cataract patients.Methods With forward-looking research, 284 cataract patients were randomly included in the control (coaxial conventional incision phacoemulsification) or observation (coaxial micro-incision phacoemulsification) groups, with 142 cases per group.The effective phacoemulsification time and mean ultrasonic energy difference were compared between two groups, and the uncorrected vision recovery, Ocular Surface Disease Index (OSDI), tear break-up time (BUT), schirmer I test (SIt), corneal fluorescence stain (FL), and the expressionsIL-6, TNF-α and EGF were measured in two groups on preoperative (T0), 1 week after operation (T1), 2 weeks after operation (T2), 4 weeks after operation (T3), and the above indicators of Spearman correlation analysis.Results There was no significant difference in effective phacoemulsification time and mean ultrasonic energy between two groups (P ＞ 0.05).The improvement of uncorrected visual acuity in observation group was significantly better than that in the control group (F=6.116, P =0.032).In addition, OSDI, FL,IL-6,TNF-α, and EGF showed the first increase and then decreased at different time points, and the observation group was superior to the control group with statistically significant difference.At the same time, BUT and SIt showed a trend of increasing first and then decreased, and the observation group was superior to the control group with statistically significant difference.In addition, IL-6, TNF-α, and EGF expressions were positively correlated with OSDI and FL scores (P ＞ 0.05).Conclusions Micro-incision phacoemulsification can help reduce the expressions of IL-6 and TNF-α, improve the expression levels of EGF in cataract patients, and reduce the incidence of adverse symptoms such as dry eye after operation.It might improve the clinical therapeutic effect.