EyeWorld is the official news magazine of the American Society of Cataract & Refractive Surgery.
Issue link: https://digital.eyeworld.org/i/387844
87 EW SECONDARY FEATURE October 2014 a safer option," he said. Addition- ally, he added that multifocal laser ablations and inlays might be best for hyperopes, while monovision is a better option for myopes. "In many cases, these corneal strategies incur a mixture of mono- vision and multifocality, where the dominant eye is less multifocal and close to emmetropia, and the non- dominant eye more multifocal and closer to myopia," Dr. Gatinel said. Elenza and other electronic systems Although Elenza (Roanoke, Va.) was previously developing an electronic lens, Dr. Lindstrom said the proj- ect is stalled, and the company is not currently active as it failed to capitalize on its business plan. The company had made significant pro - ress in developing the technologies that would be necessary to create an electronic intraocular lens that would change powers, including tiny rechargeable batteries. Dr. Lindstrom said a positive note may be the recent joint venture by Alcon (Fort Worth, Texas) and Google (Mountain View, Calif.) to develop an electronic contact lens. Some proposed features of this are diagnostics to measure blood sugar and an ability to create a contact lens that is similar in idea and structure to what Elenza was doing. Another stalled electronic lens system is the eyeglasses from PixelOptics (Roanoke, Va.) that had the ability to change power; how- ever, this company also failed. Dr. Lindstrom hopes for development of electronic lens projects in the future. Additional points Although multifocal technology is progressing, Dr. Gatinel still finds that the level of customization that is put into monofocal corrections with wavefront laser-based refrac- tive surgery is not always used for multifocals. "Preoperative wavefront (both corneal and total) measurements along with pupil dynamics explo- ration should be part of the pre- operative exploration of patients interested in presbyopia correction," he said. Meanwhile, Dr. Lindstrom said there are new IOLs that could be introduced sooner than we think. The next IOLs that will be seen are extended depth of focus lenses, he said. He expects these to be intro- duced in the U.S. at about the same time as the rest of the world. "These lenses use either aspheric optics, so they're hyper aspheric, or hyper prolate optics to increase the depth of focus of the intraocular lens," he said. "That allows good distance and good intermediate vision with some near, with almost imperceptible loss of quality at distance and minimal night vision symptoms." Dr. Lindstrom said this technology will likely launch first from Hoya ( okyo), with Alcon and Abbott Medical Optics (AMO, Santa Ana, Calif.) getting involved as well. EW Editors' note: Dr. Lindstrom has financial interests with Alcon, AMO, and Bausch + Lomb (Bridgewater, N.J.). Dr. Gatinel has financial interests with PhysIOL. Contact information Gatinel: gatinel@gmail.com Lindstrom: rllindstrom@mneye.com