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Speaker: Presbyopic LASIK treatment targets near, intermediate vision, preserves distance vision
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BOSTON – Patients who have undergone previous LASIK will all age and become presbyopic. These are the patients who are motivated to continue a spectacle-free lifestyle, according to a speaker here.
“Some of these patients over the years have regressed; some still have some residual refractive error,” Robert Ang, MD, said at the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery annual meeting. “These are our patients who come back to us after many years and still want less dependence on spectacles.”
Robert Ang
Among other options – glasses, enhancement targeting classic monovision, corneal inlays – one solution may be presbyopic LASIK treatment, Ang said, reporting 6-month results of the Supracor (Bausch + Lomb) LASIK procedure in 27 eyes. This product is not FDA-approved for use in the U.S.
“The objective of our study is to evaluate the safety and efficacy of presbyopic LASIK treatment applied in post-LASIK patients,” Ang said. “Supracor is an algorithm designed to provide near and intermediate vision whilst not affecting distance vision much.”
In the prospective single site study, only the nondominant eye was treated. Target refraction was –0.5 D, opposed to classic monovision of –1.5 D. At baseline, patients ranged between –2 and +2 spherical equivalents, but at 6 months after treatment, refractive outcomes are maintained “more or less on target” between –0.25 D and –0.5 D, Ang said.
In a subjective questionnaire, at 6 months 93% of patients said they could read newspaper headlines without glasses and 89% said they could read text messages without glasses, while 96% said they would recommend the procedure to their friends.
Disclosure: Ang is a consultant for Bausch + Lomb Technolas.