Phakic lenses continue to capture interest for refractive correction

From the late 1990s to the first decade of the 21st century, there has been increasing interest in different kinds of refractive procedures, said José Guell, MD, PhD. One option that has been receiving more and more attention is phakic IOLs. He highlighted some of the factors for this during Cornea Day 2006 at the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery meeting.

Regarding refractive results, he said phakic IOLs provide better results than LASIK, especially for patients with high myopia; in addition there is no difference in surgical complication rates between the two types of procedures.

The results with phakic IOLs are stable, adjustable, and reversible and do not differ significantly from LASIK.

However, patient perception of LASIK is better than that of phakic IOLs, said Dr. Guell. He is associate professor of ophthalmology, Aulonoma University of Barcelona, director of the Cornea and Refractive Surgery Unit, Instituto de Microcirugia Ocular de Barcelona, Barcelona.

Another consideration is that the quality of vision is high with phakic IOLs; the patients' vision decreases at a certain point with LASIK.

"Phakic IOLs can provide the safest and most precise refractive correction and can preserve and improve the quality of vision. Corneal ablation should be used to treat lower corrections to preserve the maximum asphericity. We will see with higher corrections an exponential increase in additional surgical techniques because they are reversible. Wavefront modifications in the IOLs will be able to be performed in the near future. We do not yet have enough long-term data from some of the phakic IOLs that are currently available," Dr. Guell concluded.