Phakic IOLs Boston - New England Eye Center

We use Phakic IOLs at our Boston practice to treat young patients with extreme nearsightedness. Phakic IOLs are lenses that are surgically implanted in the eye.

DR. HELEN WU: For those patients who are young, who do not yet have cataracts, and who have extreme nearsightedness, we have a new state of the art procedure called Phakic Lens implants. Young means 25 to 45 or 50. It means people who don't have cataracts yet who have extreme nearsightedness. Some of these people can only see clearly right up here. They're extremely nearsighted, and without glasses or contact lenses, they can't even escape from a burning building so it's a safety issue for them Most people in the United States can have LASIK because they do not have severe nearsightedness, but a few percent of the population will require an intraocular procedure so for them we have the Phakic lens implants, which is otherwise known as the intraocular contact lens. Currently, there are two FDA improved lens implants on the market, and they are known as the Vericise lens and the Vision ICL. You can think of t his option as basically putting a contact lens inside the eye. You can think of it as an intraocular contact lens so you don't have to remove the patient's own crystalline lens. And they're still able to accommodate or see up close. They're still able to focus up close if they can maintain their own crystalline lens. That's why we don't want to take out their crystalline lenses. You go into a surgery center to have it done, and you have anesthetic or a local anesthetic beside the eye. And the procedure takes about 10 minutes to do, and then afterwards you go home with a little shield over your eye to protect it. And the return to vision is almost instantaneous. Within several hours, they're seeing 20/20 or close to it, which is a miracle for somebody who was minus 10 or minus 15. The Phakic lens implants have to be done in a surgery center so we have a state of the art surgery center in Waltham called Boston Surgisite, and we do our Phakic lens implant procedures there. We are certainly one of the only centers in Boston that actually implants the Phakic, Phakic lens implant. I received my cornea fellowship training at Mass Eye and Ear 17 years ago in Boston, and shortly thereafter I joined the staff at Tufts New England Medical Center. And together with the team of engineers at Summit Technology, which was one of the first laser companies, we developed protocols and we did our early research in PRK and LASIK starting 15, 16 years ago. We do our presbiopic lens implant surgeries here at Tufts New England Medical Center, and as well, we have a state of the art ambulatory surgery center call Boston Surgisite out in Waltham.