Laser Cataract Surgery More Accurate Than Manual

Laser Cataract Surgery More Accurate Than Manual.


Cataract surgery, already an hellishly chest and well-fixed procedure, can be made more nice by combining a laser and three-dimensional imaging, a supplemental study suggests. Researchers found that a femtosecond laser, reach-me-down for many years in LASIK surgery, can dig into delicate eye tissue more cleanly and accurately than vade-mecum cataract surgery, which is performed more than 1,5 million times each year in the United States buy zoton 15mg uk. In the on the qui vive procedure, which has a 98 percent happy result rate, surgeons use a micro-blade to chop a tour around the cornea before extracting the cataract with an ultrasound machine.



The laser drill uses optical coherence technology to customize each patient's sidelong glance measurements before slicing through the lens capsule and cataract, though ultrasound is still Euphemistic pre-owned to liquidate the cataract itself. "It takes some experience and power to break the lens with the ultrasound," explained first researcher Daniel Palanker, an associate professor of ophthalmology at Stanford University. "The laser helps to go like a bat out of hell this up and seduce it safer".



After practicing the laser strategy on pig eyes and donated charitable eyes, Palanker and his colleagues did further experiments to recognize that the high-powered, rapid-pulse laser would not cause retinal damage. Actual surgeries later performed on 50 patients between the ages of 55 and 80 showed that the laser lower circles in lens capsules 12 times more specific than those achieved by the household method. No adverse junk were reported.



The study, reported in the Nov 17, 2010 emanation of Science Translational Medicine, was funded by OpticaMedica Corp of Santa Clara, Calif, in which Palanker has an disinterest stake. The results are being reviewed by the US Food and Drug Administration, while the laser technology, which is being developed by several intimate companies, is expected to be released worldwide in 2011.



Dr Scott Greenstein, a full ophthalmology and cataracts whizzo at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, said he was uneasy that the examination was funded by a institution with a ante in the outcome. But he added that the information was encouraging. "I privately am roused by it," said Greenstein, who teaches ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School. "It's an enhancement of something we're already doing that's totally successful". "We desideratum a count of centers studying this with more patients," he added. "It would be practical to decide if there is a significant statistical contrariety in the outcomes".



Both Greenstein and Dr Richard Bensinger, a Seattle ophthalmologist and spokesman for the American Academy of Ophthalmology, expressed awareness that the laser-guided cataract surgery would be much more overpriced than enchiridion surgery and were skeptical that salubriousness warranty companies would be zealous to harvest up the tab. "It's a fairly expensive practice to do something we do right now with a $120 instrument that makes the opening," Bensinger said. "It's useful to the limitation that it can avoid a tear in the cornea - but the downside is you beggary a very expensive machine to do it. It's at best a spot refinement that adds a baby precision".



Although the femtosecond laser technique is unquestionably more precise, Palanker's allege that it results in a better convenient for the artificial lens replacing the clouded one is dubious, Bensinger and Greenstein said. Experienced surgeons performing directions cataract surgery almost never have make uncomfortable aligning the new lens with the ecclesiastical catechumen and keeping it in place, they noted.



So "Over the thousands of cases I've done, I'm uncommonly not hep personally of this being a problem," Greenstein said. "If you have a less precise, accomplished surgeon then this would be a advantage for the patient. It makes reproducible, perfected incisions every time". Palanker said further probe will focus on whether laser-guided cataract surgery results in better postoperative revenant than traditional surgery where to buy herbalife in las vegas. Among the tiny group of study participants, he said, there was no significant disagreement in outcomes between the two.