Bausch & Lomb announces intent to purchase AcuFocus

KOLOA, Hawaii — Bausch & Lomb will expand its refractive offerings to include an intracorneal inlay designed to treat presbyopia by increasing a patient's depth of field, according to officers from two companies.

In conjunction with AcuFocus, the company that developed the ACI 7000, Bausch & Lomb announced "an equity investment in and secured an exclusive option to purchase AcuFocus Inc.," during a press conference here at the Hawaiian Eye 2007 meeting.

"We hope it will reaffirm our commitment to providing surgical solutions in the area of refractive surgery and presbyopia," said Michael F. Barra, Bausch & Lomb vice president, surgical business development.

Noting that this corneal inlay does not change the power or shape of the cornea, Daniel S. Durrie, MD, AcuFocus medical monitor and OSN Refractive Surgery Section Editor, described the optical principle of the inlay as "similar to changing the F-stop on a camera." The ACI 7000 is 10 µm thick, has a diameter of 3.8 mm, a central aperture of 1.6 mm and is intended to be implanted unilaterally in the nondominant eye.

"AcuFocus provides presbyopic patients with an add of 2.5 D by increasing depth of focus, is easy to implant and doesn't have a lot of effect on distance vision," he said.

The results of early studies have been favorable, Dr. Durrie said.

In a cohort of 34 patients from Istanbul, all patients had uncorrected distance vision of 20/20 both preoperatively and at 12 months postop. Uncorrected near visual acuity improved from J6 to J1+ at 12 months, he said.

The European study also found similar results with uncorrected distance vision only minimally affected during a short period and good improvement in intermediate and near vision, according to Dr. Durrie.

Dr. Durrie noted that, by the nature of the intracorneal inlay, it is optically independent of other surgical procedures; therefore, it can be implanted in a pseudophakic patient.

"Bausch & Lomb is doing something and they are doing something big," Dr. Durrie said. "This is an exciting new concept for the treatment of presbyopia."

The 3-year FDA IDE study began in February 2006 and will eventually include 400 patients at up to 20 clinical sites.