ICL- Implantable Contact Lenses Information Guide

Patients always get confused between whats Phakic Intraocular Lens and Implantable contact lens. Let us confirm, Its just the same. The only difference is the name doctors or surgeons use to name this.

The Phakic Intraocular lenses look like regular contact lenses or crescent-shaped segments. These lenses are implanted surgically without removing the eye’s natural lens. They are placed between the cornea and the iris or just behind the iris of the eye.

During the surgery, Doctors use just few anesthetic drops in to your eye. No injections, no sedation.

Lets look at the Phakic Intraocular Lens implantation Video:

ICL or Implantable Contact lens is made of inert materials and can last a lifetime. In the case of the lenses inserted into a patient’s eye for nearsightedness or myopia, these lenses will need to be removed if the patient develops a cataract and cataract surgery is recommended.

Cataract can be treated with ICL as well.

We have a subject with a degenerative eye disease called keratoconus that makes reading a challenge. Imagine with vision so blurry that the subject couldn’t read the big “E” atop an eye chart from more than 6 feet away.

Keratoconus causes the cornea to bulge outward, causing blurred vision. In some mild cases, glasses or contacts can be the answer. In this case, neither did the trick. Lasik didn’t work, either; Subjct tried that in 2000, but was back in glasses within a year.

After a lot of reasearch, the subject found out about ICL (Implantable collamer lens) . He was deemed a candidate for Visian ICL, or Implantable Collamer Lens, a 9-minute surgery where a contact is embedded behind the iris. It’s permanent and the good thing is ICL can be reversed unlike Lasik.

His vision, once as bad as 20-500 - which gets defined as “profound visual impairment” - is now close to perfect. He sees things on tracks that he never knew were there before.

He didn’t just suffer from keratoconus, but also was extremely nearsighted. So Boxer Wachler - who has performed similar procedures before live on national television, plus has worked with other athletes, most notably Los Angeles Lakers’ guard Derek Fisher - began the process by having Holcomb undergo what’s called C3-R, something that strengthens the anchors within the cornea and minimizes the bulging effect.

Another demonstration that ICL is better than Lasik. The biggest Lasik/ICL manufacturer STARR VISION already noticing huge drop in Lasik sales and a tremendous pickup in ICL sales. Just a hint that Lasik is slowly becoming an old technology and ICL will soon become a primary eye surgery option.