This isn’t your grandmother’s cataract surgery!
By now you’ve probably heard of all-laser LASIK which dramatically improved the precision and safety we could offer our patients who wanted vision correct surgery. But have you heard about bladeless cataract surgery? The exciting all-laser technology used to correct the vision of our LASIK patients is now being used to increase the precision and safety of cataract removal. In the past, our skilled cataract surgeons manually made a small incision in the eye to remove the cataract, the lens inside of the eye that had become cloudy over time. Eye Doctors of Washington is the first practice in Washington, DC to offer all-laser cataract surgery to our patients using Alcon’s femtosecond LenSX platform!
“Having a LASIK practice, we have seen the benefit of the advances in laser technology through the years. The transition from using mechanical cuts to all-laser LASIK brought both safety and precision to the procedure. Our expectation is that LenSx laser will similarly bring increased accuracy and precision to cataract surgery, which is already a safe and successful procedure.” Said Dr. Kang.
The femtosecond laser makes this possible by creating a more precise, and therefore safer, incision that is reproducible. In one study presented at the American Academy of Ophthalmology, femtosecond laser incisions achieved incision accuracy in 100% of cases, while only 10% of surgeons’ manual cuts were within the acceptable range. It gives our surgeons greater control and flexibility while in surgery. The incisions created by the femtosecond laser are so small that they heal faster than the incisions manually made by our surgeons, further reducing the risk of infection.
“The addition of the LenSx laser is exciting because it allows us the ability to provide our patients with the precision of computer controlled surgical incisions and a gentler method to remove the lens. There is no question that it will revolutionize the way we do cataract surgery,” said Dr. Clinch.
