EyeWorld is the official news magazine of the American Society of Cataract & Refractive Surgery.
Issue link: https://digital.eyeworld.org/i/104833
January 2013 three populations, using the CSV1000. In summary, Presbyond Laser Blended Vision is a solution for presbyopia that meets all the goals of good binocular vision at all distances, no compromise in safety, contrast sensitivity, or night vision, and retention of functional stereo acuity. The procedure is immediately reversible by wearing spectacles, or a simple retreatment can be done using a standard excimer laser ablation with the advantage of keeping the depth of field. All this is achieved while simultaneously correcting a wide range of refractive errors and astigmatism levels. The key to this approach was to base it on the natural mechanisms of spherical aberration processing and binoc- ular fusion, unlike multifocal approaches that require the patient to adjust to the unnatural situation of having to differentiate between two images in the same eye. EW Editors' note: Dr. Reinstein practices at the London Vision Clinic, London, and is affiliated with the Department of Ophthalmology, Columbia University Medical College, New York, and the Centre Hospitalier National d'Ophtalmologie, Paris. He has financial interests with Carl Zeiss Meditec and ArcScan Inc. (Morrison, Colo.). Contact information Reinstein: +44 020 7224 1005, dzr@londonvisionclinic.com IKS is massive undertaking for ACS The Asia Cornea Society's Infectious Keratitis Study (ACSIKS) is set to be a major game changer for the region. "Corneal blindness is big in Asia," said Donald Tan, M.D., Singapore, current president of the Cornea Society and the Asia Cornea Society (ACS). It's a fair statement, summarizing the significance of the most important cause of blindness in the region second only to cataract, but it barely scratches the surface, given the full scope and many nuances of the problem. Most corneal disease in the world occurs in Asia, said Prof. Tan. Here, he said, corneal ulceration is a "silent epidemic." But the challenge of corneal blindness in Asia isn't confined to magnitude; unsurprisingly for the region, huge variations exist from country to country, such that the problem runs the gamut of the entire spectrum of corneal infections. Epidemiological patterns, for one, differ significantly, said Prashant Garg, M.D., Hyderabad, India. For instance, whereas studies have identified contact lens use and ocular surface disease as the major risk factors for microbial keratitis in a developed region like Hong Kong, trauma is the most prevalent cause of infection in India, affecting a correspondingly different age group: Most patients in India, said Dr. Garg, fall in the range of 20-50 years—the economically productive age group. Wide variations also exist from country to country in terms of pathogen, environmental risk factors, the availability of drugs, antibiotic resistance patterns, access to treatment, and any number of other variables that have yet to be adequately quantified. To this end, the ACS has embarked on the ACSIKS, a multicenter, prospective observational study in 11 study centers in eight major locations (China, India, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, and Singapore). The study is intended to document the clinical management practices of doctors all over the region, while also collecting microbiological samples from recruited cases. To date, said Prof. Tan, the study has recruited 2,118 cases, with preliminary data analysis of 1,544 of these cases. Preliminary analysis, he said, has identified fungal and bacterial pathogens to be the main causes of infectious keratitis in the region. Editors' note: ACSIKS is made possible by the support of Alcon (Fort Worth, Texas), Allergan (Irvine, Calif.), Bausch + Lomb (Rochester, N.Y.), and Santen (Napa, Calif.).