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There’s a third option that we really haven’t talked about that you can also use to correct
your vision. It’s an implantable contact lens. It’s not where you take out your lens,
but you’re putting a contact lens over.
Correct.
Go ahead and explain.
And um, that’s called the Visian ICL, I’ll show you a little model of it. Course, it’s
not this big. It’d be smaller than a dime, but essentially, it is like a rectangular
contact lens. And, this is the optic here; that would be the power. And it’s really
for nearsighted people not farsighted . And it’s actually inserted behind the pupil.
Avery small incision is made, so it’s placed in front of your own lens, without removing
your own lens. And the Visian ICL is used for patients that are too nearsighted for
LASIK, or their cornea is too thin for LASIK, or if they have a correction high enough that
really flattening the cornea would affect the vision quality.
So, if the cornea is too thin, or we can’t even correct that myopia with LASIK, say you
have minus 20, would not have LASIK. And right about minus 7 and 8 we think about Visian
because the LASIK procedure would be such a severe flattening of the cornea it would
begin to affect the quality of vision.
So some patients may be a candidate for LASIK or Visian, but may have a better visual result
with the Visian ICL.
Tell us, go ahead, this is another example of the step by step procedure. Tell us what
we’re seeing here.
Yes. The pupil is dilated during the procedure,
and this is all done with a little sedation and numbing drops. A very small incision is
made-
With a blade, not a laser.
That’s right, very small. You’re going inside the eye there, and the viscoelastic
is a clear material that’s removed later to help keep the eye formed and protect the
inside of the eye. And it’s also used to help fold up the ICL.; It’s really placed
through like a 2-3mm incision. It’s a teeny little incision, and does not make dry eye
worse. So someone who has a dry eye may choose Visian
because Visian does not make the eye more dry. And then the ICL is like an implantable
contact lens material; it’s very inert. And it is really just injected, as a folded
little contact lens that unfolds inside the eye. We’ll see this little graphic here-
And just opens up-really takes about 5 minutes, really quick procedure with the pupil dilated.
There are little four little haptics in the four corners of the rectangular lens. And
then those are just tucked behind the iris, and there is a space there called the sulkis,
behind the iris. It’s designed to perfectly fit there, and it does not move and it just
stays there. It’s meant to be permanent, but it can be removed later in life.
And that’s a prescription, correct?
That’s a prescription.
And it wouldn’t change over time? Your prescription would not change why is that?
No, it doesn’t tend to. Well, if the eye, like we mentioned earlier, if the eye is fairly
stable it wouldn’t change over a period of time. However, if the eye did change, or
there was some astigmatism left after Visian, one can come back and do a little LASIK touch
up to fine tune things, but we’re not doing the full correction with the LASIK, we’re
just doing a touch up. So that cornea steepness would still be normal,
and that’s really what we want to do. During an evaluation we carefully look at the shape
of the cornea is and how steep the cornea is, and we estimate how flat that cornea might
be after a laser procedure. And if that flatness is not within the normal range that we like
to see, we then might recommend the Visian ICL which doesn’t change the structure of
the eye and the cornea remains steep.
For example, an eagle has a very steep cornea, can see for miles, better than us. A frog
has a flat cornea, only need to see in front of his face, to you know catch an insect.
So, called a prolate cornea is a steep cornea, where the center is steeper than the periphery.
An oblate cornea would be where it’s not as steep as the periphery and we can actually
measure all those things and know ahead of time what procedure’s best for you.
Here at Christenbury Eye Center we use only the latest, most advanced technology like
our all laser iLASIK procedure to help you achieve incredible vision. It’s the safest
most precise technology available. Don’t wait, call us today.