This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
New feature on customized ablation debuts
This monthly column is aimed at helping clinicians understand the implications of higher-order errors and their correction.
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
 |
 |
OSN Refractive Surgery Section Editor
Earlier this year, Ocular Surgery News published a 6-part series introducing the terms and exploring the implications of customized ablation. Our next step is to look at specific case studies with the various technologies currently available. Looking at both unusual and typical cases can help us to improve patient selection and outcomes. Future installments of this monthly column will include submissions by guest contributors familiar with the range of wavefront-guided ablation technologies currently available to U.S. surgeons. We hope this monthly column will serve to educate physicians who are considering adopting this new technology or who have already been using customized ablation in practice.
Presented here is our first case, my own patient.
History: A 27-year-old white male presented for an evaluation for possible LASIK vision correction in both eyes. The patient was found to be an excellent candidate for Alcon’s wavefront-guided CustomCornea ablation.
Preoperative examination (right eye):
Uncorrected visual acuity: 20/100
Manifest refraction: –2.25 –0.75 3170
Visual acuity: 20/20
Procedure: CustomCornea LASIK in both eyes
Three-month postoperative examination (right eye):
Uncorrected visual acuity: 20/20
Refraction: –0.25 D sphere
Lower-order aberrations (sphere and cylinder):
- Reduced by 99% (See A, D at right)
Higher-order aberrations (coma and spherical aberration):
- Coma reduced by 52% (See B, E at right)
- Spherical Aberration reduced by 56% ( See C, F at right)
Discussion: The patient’s operative outcome using the CustomCornea treatment was excellent; his vision is 20/20, and he is happy. Examining the printouts, we can see there have been reductions in both the lower- and higher-order aberrations. Special attention should be drawn to the higher-order aberrations. Although there has been a noteworthy reduction, there has not been complete elimination. The significance of this reduction will be evident in your patient’s reports of improvements in such things as night vision and reduction of ghost images
Next month: A 24-year-old engineer is treated with the Bausch and Lomb Planoscan in one eye and the Bausch and Lomb Zyoptix in the other.