Eyeworld

EW NEWS & OPINION 11 T he American Society of Cataract and Refractive Sur- gery and the American So- ciety of Ophthalmic Administrators (ASCRS•ASOA) is partnering with Custom Credit Card Processing Inc. (CCCP, Alexandria, Va.) to offer dis- counted credit card processing fees to participating members. CCCP, along with its processing partner National Processing Com- pany (NPC), will forgo application and setup fees, monthly minimums, early termination fees, and annual fees to those practices that maintain an active ASCRS•ASOA membership. Additionally, CCCP will apply its highly service-oriented approach by providing education and consulta- tive services for ASCRS•ASOA mem- bers, thus giving practitioners an opportunity to receive the most up- to-date information about credit card processing, how it works, and what it can do for their practices. "Our goal," said CCCP President Marci Weis, "is to empower ASCRS•ASOA practices with the knowledge they need to minimize their costs." ASOA President Lisa Gangi, C.O.E., said, "Efficiency in all of the business aspects of our practices is of ever-growing importance. Receiving prompt payment and avoiding need- less fees are a key part of that. The CCCP program represents more value for the service provided than traditional programs. Moreover, the ability to receive consultative sup- port means we can fully utilize the credit card payment system with the least cost." For more information about this program, contact Marci Weis at Cus- tom Credit Card Processing and be sure to mention that you are an ASCRS•ASOA member, phone: 703- 739-2224 x202, email: ASCRS- ASOA@cccpinc.com, website: www.cccpinc.com. DORC donates VisionBlue to Foundation Institute The Dutch Ophthalmic Research Center (DORC USA, Exeter, N.H.) has committed to supply quantities of VisionBlue (trypan blue) in sup- port of the humanitarian work by the ASCRS Foundation Robert Sinskey Eye Institute in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. by John Ciccone ASCRS Director of Communications ASCRS•ASOA partners with CCCP to offer discount credit card processing May 2011 Reading performance with 4 IOL models Jorge L. Alió, M.D., Ph.D., Günther Grabner, M.D., Ana B. Plaza-Puche, M.Sc., Max Rasp, M.D., David P. Piñero, Ph.D., Orang Seyeddain, M.D., Jose L. Rodríguez-Prats, M.D., Ph.D., María José Ayala, M.D., Ph.D., Rocío Moreu, Ph.D., Melchior Hohensinn, M.D., Wolfgang Riha, M.D., Alois Dexl, M.D., M.Sc. Investigators in this comparative case series set out to determine how 152 patients' bilateral reading performance fared with use of four differ- ent intraocular lens types. At the 6-month mark, they compared results with the Acri.Smart 48S monofocal, the AcrySof ReSTOR SN6AD3 apodized multifocal, the Acri.LISA 366D diffractive multifocal, and the ReZoom multifocal refractive lenses. Investigators determined that when it came to uncorrected reading acuity at the 1- and 6-month marks, those in the apodized multifocal and refractive multifocal groups sur- passed those receiving either of the other two types of lenses. At the 1- month mark, those with refractive multifocal lenses had the slowest reading speed and did significantly worse than those in the monofocal group. Investigators concluded that when it came to reading perform- ance, diffractive multifocal IOLs fared significantly better than their re- fractive multifocal or monofocal counterparts. Effect of preoperative counseling on fear Aravind Haripriya, M.D., Colin S.H. Tan, M.Med.(Ophth.), F.R.C.S.Ed.(Ophth.), Venkatesh Rengaraj, M.D., Srinivasan Aravind, M.D., Anand Dev, Kah-Guan Au Eong, M.Med.(Ophth.), F.R.C.S.Ed.(Ophth.) In this randomized, masked clinical trial investigators considered whether fears of potential intraoperative visual perceptions that can occur during cataract surgery can be forestalled by pre-op counseling. For the study, some patients slated for phacoemulsification under topi- cal anesthesia randomly received pre-op counseling on possible intraop- erative visual perceptions while others were not informed of the phenomena. In the study, 65.6% of patients received additional counsel- ing while 34.4% received no extra therapy. Investigators found that 10.6% of those who had not received counseling were frightened by the visual sensations during cataract surgery versus 4.5% of those who had extra support. The counseled group also had significantly lower mean fear scores than those who had not been counseled about potential phe- nomena such as light perception, colors, movement, and flashes. The conclusion reached was that the mean fear score and the proportion of patients who were frightened while undergoing cataract surgery under topical anesthesia was significantly reduced by pre-operative counseling. Review/update: Questionnaires for measuring cataract surgery outcomes Mats Lundström, M.D., Ph.D., Konrad Pesudovs, Ph.D. When it comes to the evaluation of cataract surgery, besides the hard- and-fast data, one important component can be patient-reported out- comes. While there have been a variety of published questionnaires for such reported outcomes over time, the construction and ultimate evalu- ation of these devices has changed with some constructed according to classical test theory and others using item-response theory. In this up- date, investigators considered questionnaires from 1992 onward and delved into the various psychometric properties used to create these. In the journal … May 2011 continued on page 12

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