Summary of Surgical Techniques to Correct Presbyopia
June 1, 2009
The latest issue of Eye World, the news magazine of the American Society of Cataract & Refractive Surgery, had an article exploring existing surgical techniques for correcting presbyopia.
Techniques covered include:
- Surgical approaches including LASIK, PRK, conductive keratoplasty (CK), and intraocular lenses, designed to attain blended vision
- Presbyopia correcting corneal devices such as corneal inlays (including the Presbylens (ReVision Optics, Lake Forest, Calif.), the ACI 7000 (Acufocus/Bausch and Lomb Surgical San Dimas, Calif.) and the Invue intracorneal microlens (Biovision, Brugges, Switzerland) that rely on a pinhole effect to offer good near acuity for emmetropic presbyopes.
- Intraocular approach relying on premium lenses such as the ReSTOR (Alcon, Ft. Worth, Texas), the ReSTOR toric (Alcon), the ReZoom (AMO), and the Tecnis multifocal (AMO).
- Femtosecond laser for intrastromal correction (uses the Femtec laser (Technolas 20/10 Perfect Vision GmbH, Munich, Germany) to target nested cylinders suspended in the cornea within the stroma).
Concerning lasers, a new startup company, LensAR, located in Winter Park, FL, founded by Randy Frey, former head of Autonmous Technologies, has begun work on using a femtosecond laser to provide some of the lost accommodation in the aged eye. LensAR hopes to use the laser to separate some of the protein fibers within the lens, so that they “can slide over each other”.
The safety and efficacy of this approach is currently being modeled at LensAR, according to Ron Krueger, during his presentation at the recent ASCRS Meeting in San Francisco, as reported in the current issue of EyeWorld.
Others working on similar techniques include Laser Centrum (Hanover, Germany) and Carl Zeiss Meditec (Dublin, CA).
Read the full article in EyeWorld.
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One Response to “Summary of Surgical Techniques to Correct Presbyopia”
In addition to the approach by LensAR, which Ron Krueger mentioned in the writeup above, I have since learned that at least two other companies are attempting to perform cataract surgery via a small incision in the lens capsule, to be followed by insertion of a polymer injectable lens to achieve some degree of accommodation. These are LenSx and Optimedica.
More about this as soon as I get further information.
Irv Arons
