AAO 2023: ViaLase announces completion of VIA-002 trial

Rick Lewis, MD, Chief Medical Officer for ViaLase met with Ophthalmology Times to discuss completion of their important pivotal trial called VIA-002, which is a randomized prospective trial of the use of the ViaLase Laser versus SLT in adult patients with primary open angle glaucoma at the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

Video Transcript

Editor's note - This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Rick Lewis, MD:

Hi, I'm Rick Lewis, and I am the Chief Medical Officer for ViaLase. ViaLase is a company with a femtolaser technology. It was founded by the same team that brought the femtolaser ophthalmology, which includes IntraLase for corneal refractive surgery, and LenSx for cataract surgery. The goal with the ViaLase technology for glaucoma is to create a trabeculotomy through the trabecular meshwork with no incision, doing the all, doing the process, through a patient interface that's applied to the cornea. We are here at the American Academy meeting in San Francisco, and we presented at the eyecelerator meeting showing our data. We have safety data, including 18 patients in whom we achieved a, about a 38% pressure reduction, no serious side effects. This was an effort to create, without an incision, a 500 by 200 micron trabeculotomy into the trabecular meshwork. This was a single application.

We are now have, just announced completion of our important pivotal trial, which is a randomized prospective trial compared the ViaLase technology, which we call FLIGHT, which stands for femtolaser image guided highprecision trabeculotomy, and we compare the flight procedure to SLT. Patients were randomized and prospective fashion. They will be followed for up to 5 years. Although, we're initially interested in the in the first year's with the data. We are very excited about this technology because of the remarkable imaging we have with both gonioscopy as well as OCT. So we can very precisely place our tabeculotomy and avoiding some of the issues in the angle, including some that cause bleeding and scarring. And, thus far, we have follow up up to 3 years without any of that scarring or other complications. So, we are excited about the technology. We anticipate good results and look forward to further developments in our research efforts.