Optics News

Ocular Surgery News convened its annual Section Editor Summit in Las Vegas in March. In this fourth installment of reports from the OSN Section Editor Summit, Optics, Refraction and Contact Lenses Section Editor Jack T. Holladay, MD, MSEE, FACS, gives an update on his subspecialty.

BETHESDA, Md. — About 14 million Americans are visually impaired, and more than 11 million have uncorrected visual impairments, according to a government report.

Patients who wear spectacles expect to need them again after cataract surgery, but those who do not wear them expect to remain spectacle-free postoperatively, a patient survey found. This suggests that those who do not wear glasses preoperatively are at greater risk for postoperative refractive disappointment and complaint, the study authors suggest.

SAN DIEGO — Night driving vision was “greatly improved” in patients wearing spectacles with wavefront-guided lenses, according to a recently presented study.

SAN DIEGO — Progressive-addition lenses are more likely than bifocals to improve mobility and balance in older people, according to a poster presentation at the American Academy of Optometry meeting here.

The software in the occipital cortex of the human brain is more sophisticated than the best image-enhancing computer, according to an optics expert. Understanding that software and the process of neural adaptation is key to setting the proper goals for vision-correcting surgery, he said.

Refractive errors, both myopic and hyperopic, frequently continue to develop in older adults, according to a study in a black population. Nuclear lens opacities, glaucoma and diabetes increase the risk of older-onset myopia, an observation that has public health relevance in this population, the study authors said.

Myopic LASIK and hyperopic LASIK resulted in different patterns of higher-order aberration induction, according to a study. Myopic LASIK induced positive spherical aberrations and positive secondary astigmatism, while hyperopic LASIK resulted in negative spherical aberrations and negative secondary astigmatism.

The latest generation of excimer laser systems for refractive surgery has greatly improved the accuracy of refractive outcomes over earlier versions, but much of that improvement is due to optical concepts other than wavefront-guided correction, according to an optics expert.

Optical physics, not surgical skill, may be the greatest challenge in achieving successful surgical correction of presbyopia, according to an optics expert. But some recently developed approaches, which take advantage of physiological changes in the pupil and other optical factors, may provide the best results to date in the effort to correct presbyopia surgically, said Jack T. Holladay, MD, MSEE, FACS.