Night Driving Performance: Advantage ICLs over PRK

People considering LASIK may have heard about the possibility of night vision effects, such as halos, star bursts, and other visual artifacts. Impaired night vision is one of the most common complaints people have about LASIK and other refractive surgery procedures. Now, a study has confirmed that another vision correction option gives potentially better night vision results than one type of refractive laser surgery.

A study published in the May 2010 Journal of Refractive Surgery showed that phakic IOLs, sometimes called implantable contact lenses, gave better night vision for driving than PRK.

The study put 42 individuals (20 who had Visian ICLs (Implantable Collamer Lenses) and 22 who had PRK) in driving simulators before and after surgery and compared their preoperative and postoperative recognition and reaction times for street signs and hazards. ICL patients had significantly better improvement in recognizing road and business signs and pedestrian hazards in glare free conditions. In conditions with glare, ICL patients only had significantly better reaction times for pedestrian hazards. The study showed that, overall, patients saw a better than half-second improvement in their reaction times after ICL surgery than before.

Although the study results are significant, one wonders why the researchers decided to compare PRK with ICL rather than LASIK.

To learn more about the full range of vision correction options, please contact the LASIK directory for more information.

Software Helps Aging Eyes Operate Cell Phones

These days, a cell phone is a requisite for functioning in society, but for people with aging eyes, operating them can be difficult. Presbyopia and cataracts can make reading the tiny screen on the phone difficult. Even after cataract surgery, people with monofocal IOLs can still have difficulty reading the screen Now, a small British start-up has developed a solution that can help people with diminished vision to read and operate their cell phones. Although newer smartphones solve this problem with larger screens, many people in the target demographic prefer to use their older phones because they use them mostly for routine tasks.

The solution is called C-CallerID, software that identifies common callers with an easily-readable graphic, either a one or two-letter abbreviation or a visual icon that can be selected from the company's database. The software was originally developed as an app by the company's founder. His wife was having trouble using her phone after cataract surgery and complained about having to fumble for her glasses or ask friends to read her phone for her. The company unveiled the software this week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It's available for use on many brands of mobile phones, including Motorola, Nokia, Sony, Samsung, and LG. It is currently being advertised for use in Britain, and may also be available in other areas.

Although age can dramatically impact the quality of your vision, it doesn't have to impact the quality of your life. To learn more about coping with declining vision, please contact an ophthalmologist to learn more about vision solutions.

Will Synchrony Get FDA Approval This Year?

Presbyopia and cataract sufferers look for a vision solution that can save them from the burden of reading glasses. Although LASIK is a great solution for many vision problems, its only solution for presbyopia (monovision) is not a very good one. For many years the most promising avenue was multifocal IOLs, which replaced the eye's accommodating lens with one whose multiple focal zones allowed recipients to see at different distances. But multifocal lenses have a number of problems. The most common complaint about multifocal lenses is the starbursts, haloes, and other vision effects caused by light passing through focal zone boundaries.

Another solution is a lens that accommodates (changes focus) like your natural lens. There is currently only one accommodating lens approved by the FDA, Crystalens. Crystalens is a good option, but the amount of correction it gives is limited and it has been associated with a high incidence of opacity of the capsular bag that contains the lens, which requires a follow-up procedure called a capsulotomy. Now, industry experts say a second accommodating lens with the potential to solve these problems may be approved this year.

Crystalens has a single lens that moves forward and back as they eye's ciliary muscles flex. Synchrony uses a dual system of lenses that change configuration in response to ciliary muscle action, allowing a person to focus on objects at different distances. According to pre-approval studies, Synchrony offers as much as 4 diopters of correction, enough to give about 90% of recipients 20/20 or better vision and full functionality at all distances after surgery. Comparison with the multifocal lense ReSTOR showed that it was free of glare and visual artifact complaints that plagued as much as 35% of multifocal lens users.

Some studies have also been performed to test long-term stability, and it seems that Synchrony remains an effective vision solution. Vision tests and reading speeds performed at one and two-years postoperatively show that Synchrony recipieints retain visual acuity. Ultrasound biomicroscopyconfirms the continued ability of the lens to accommodate at six months, one year, and two years postoperative. Finally, the three-year capsule opacity rate for Synchrony is very low (1.9% at three years). It has also been confirmed that laser capsulotomy does not interfere with the lens' ability to accommodate.

Synchrony has been approved for use in Europe. Industry experts had hoped it would be approved by the FDA last year, but so far there has been no decision. There is no evidence available to distinguish whether the delay is just due to FDA slowness or if it is due to data that suggests a weakness in the system that we have not seen.

To learn more about this or other advanced vision correction options, please contact an ophthalmologist today.

FDA Clears Trial for Stem Cell Dry AMD Treatment

We have seen tremendous progress in recent years in the treatment of "wet" (vascular) age-related mascular degeneration (AMD).Unfortunately, "dry" macular degeneration, which makes up about 90% of cases, still has no viable treatment options.

But a treatment may be around the corner. The FDA has cleared the first clinical trials for using embryonic stem cell-derived retinal cells to treat non-vascular AMD. The new treatment will attempt to slow or stop dry AMD by replacing the retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells lost during the disease with new stem-cell-derived RPEs . Researchers hope that by replacing lost RPEs, they can save photoreceptors that the RPEs support and therefore save vision. In animal trials, the treatment has shown it can give significant vision improvement with no adverse effects.

Dry AMD affects about 20% of adults between the ages of 65-74, and 30% of people over the age of 75. The dry form progresses slower than the wet form, but over time it can result in severe vision loss and even blindness. With no treatment options available, people with dry AMD had to learn to adapt to their declining vision.

Talking to an ophthalmologist can help you understand the best ways to cope with AMD until good treatment options become available. To learn more about AMD, please contact an ophthalmologist today.