Promising hypersonic vitrectomy may offer advantages over pneumatic guillotine cutters
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WAIKOLOA, Hawaii — Hypersonic vitrectomy is a relatively new method with the potential to innovate vitreoretinal surgery, but surgeons have more to learn about it, according to a presenter at Retina 2022.
“It will be easier for all of the things that we do for vitreoretinal surgery, but we are definitely still learning about it,” Sunir J. Garg, MD, FACS, FASRS, said.
The Vitesse hypersonic vitrectomy system (Bausch + Lomb) eliminates the duty cycle, potentially causes less traction and does not require gas tanks, removing the need for specialized operating rooms equipped with gas lines, Garg said.
Another advantage of hypersonic cutters over pneumatic guillotine cutters is the surgeon’s ability to change how much cutting power the system has.
“Whenever you have greater frequency, you have exponentially more force,” Garg said.
In a small survey of surgeons who used the system during procedures on 71 eyes, some comments describing the system included “really smooth,” “less traction” and “removed dense nuclear material well.”
“I think it is a cool and very interesting thing, but if you think about the standard guillotine cutters, it took 50 years to get to where we are today,” Garg said. “Hypersonic vitrectomy has been with us for maybe 7 years, and over that time it has gotten dramatically better, and I am hopeful it will continue to improve.”
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Garg SJ. Hypersonic vitrectomy. Presented at: Retina 2022; Jan. 15-21, 2022; Waikoloa, Hawaii.
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