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Baby boomers increasingly embrace laser vision correction
Boomers are trending toward refractive corrections of lower myopia and higher hyperopia.
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A significant percentage of the laser vision correction population is made up of baby boomers, and older boomers are trending toward hyperopic treatments and refractive lens exchange, according to a surgeon.
In addition, baby boomers’ laser vision correction postoperative complaints tend to mirror the complaints of the overall laser vision correction population.
“The financial impact of the boomers on [laser vision correction] in our practices is huge and should be embraced,” Colman R. Kraff, MD, director of refractive surgery at the Kraff Eye Institute in Chicago, said at OSN New York 2011. “However, I think this population in general requires a little more time to explain things like, ‘What’s going to happen with respect to presbyopia and possibly a monovision treatment?’”
A look at baby boomers
Dr. Kraff shared unpublished research data provided by the International Medical Advisory Board of Optical Express, for which he serves as a board member.
Colman R. Kraff
“A baby boomer is a person who was born during the demographic post-World War II baby boom between 1946 and 1964,” Dr. Kraff said. Approximately 76 million American children were born in this time frame.
“[Baby boomers] control over 80% of personal financial assets and up to 50% of the discretionary spending power in the U.S.,” he said.
Moreover, baby boomers are now coming of age for cataract treatment.
“This is something we are clearly seeing in our practices,” Dr. Kraff said.
Approximately 30% of all refractive procedures performed involve baby boomers. For low or moderate hyperopia treatment, the mean age is 53.6 years, and for high hyperopia, it is 49.2 years. Starting at age 61 years, refractive surgeries taper off.
This is in contrast to treatment at a mean age of 34.8 years for low or moderate myopia, 36 years for high myopia and 39.2 years for mixed astigmatism.
Refractive corrections among baby boomers are trending toward lower myopia and higher hyperopia, leading to an increase in refractive lens exchange.
“These patients are probably now being given the option of a multifocal IOL, which is very appealing to them,” Dr. Kraff said.
An outcomes analysis dataset of 13,884 baby boomer eyes of 8,481 patients between the ages of 47 and 64 years (mean age: 52 years) that all underwent LASIK for low to moderate myopia of –0.25 D to –6 D and low astigmatism of 0 D to –1 D had results that are good, Dr. Kraff said.
The mean manifest sphere improved from –2.64 D preop to +0.03 D postop, the manifest cylinder improved from –0.52 D to –0.3 D, and the manifest refraction spherical equivalent improved from –2.9 D to –0.07 D.
Uncorrected distance visual acuity paralleled a majority of similar post-LASIK studies, Dr. Kraff said. Furthermore, few patients lost two or more lines of best corrected visual acuity, and about the same percentage lost a line or gained a line. Overall, 63.5% of patients had no change in BCVA, while 17.4% gained one line and 16.1% lost one line.
Similar complaints
The two most common complaints after surgery were dry eye (1.09%) and grade 1/2 diffuse lamellar keratitis (0.88%). Other complications included near-vision problems, flap striae, glare and halos, transient light sensitivity, regression and sterile infiltrates, but they were not prevalent.
These rates were similar to an overall LASIK population of 64,203 eyes, in which grade 1/2 diffuse lamellar keratitis (2.64%) and dry eye (2.2%) were the two most common complaints at 1 month. Other complications in the LASIK cohort, as with the baby boomer population, were sharply lower. – by Bob Kronemyer
For more information:
- Colman R. Kraff, MD, can be reached at Kraff Eye Institute, 25 E. Washington St., Suite 606, Chicago, IL 60602; 312-444-1111; fax: 312-444-1953; email: ckraff@kraffeye.com.
- Disclosure: Dr. Kraff is a consultant for AMO and Alcon. He serves as an International Medical Advisory Board member for Optical Express.