Laser Cataract Surgery More Accurate Than Manual

Laser Cataract Surgery More Accurate Than Manual.


Cataract surgery, already an hellishly allowable and prosperous procedure, can be made more unyielding by combining a laser and three-dimensional imaging, a renewed study suggests. Researchers found that a femtosecond laser, in use for many years in LASIK surgery, can incision into delicate eye tissue more cleanly and accurately than instructions cataract surgery, which is performed more than 1,5 million times each year in the United States houston black seed oil. In the fashionable procedure, which has a 98 percent prosperity rate, surgeons use a micro-blade to thin a disc around the cornea before extracting the cataract with an ultrasound machine.



The laser standard operating procedure uses optical coherence technology to customize each patient's perspicacity measurements before slicing through the lens capsule and cataract, though ultrasound is still Euphemistic pre-owned to unfasten the cataract itself. "It takes some aptitude and power to break the lens with the ultrasound," explained convince researcher Daniel Palanker, an associate professor of ophthalmology at Stanford University . "The laser helps to skedaddle this up and organize it safer".



After practicing the laser scheme on pig eyes and donated accommodating eyes, Palanker and his colleagues did further experiments to accredit 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 avoid circles in lens capsules 12 times more accurate than those achieved by the customary method. No adverse goods were reported.



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



Dr Scott Greenstein, a extensive ophthalmology and cataracts ace at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, said he was uneasy that the explore was funded by a companionship with a interest in the outcome. But he added that the information was encouraging. "I as an individual am on a high by it," said Greenstein, who teaches ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School. "It's an enhancement of something we're already doing that's moderately successful". "We difficulty a platoon of centers studying this with more patients," he added. "It would be expedient to fathom if there is a significant statistical alteration in the outcomes".



Both Greenstein and Dr Richard Bensinger, a Seattle ophthalmologist and spokesman for the American Academy of Ophthalmology, expressed duty that the laser-guided cataract surgery would be much more dear than guide surgery and were skeptical that healthfulness security companies would be assenting to take in up the tab. "It's a fairly expensive condition to do something we do right now with a $120 instrument that makes the opening," Bensinger said. "It's healthy to the bounds that it can avoid a tear in the cornea - but the downside is you extremity a very expensive machine to do it. It's at best a sparse refinement that adds a speck precision".



Although the femtosecond laser technique is unquestionably more precise, Palanker's affirm that it results in a better appropriate for for the artificial lens replacing the clouded one is dubious, Bensinger and Greenstein said. Experienced surgeons performing directions cataract surgery once in a blue moon have difficulty aligning the new lens with the beginner and keeping it in place, they noted.



So "Over the thousands of cases I've done, I'm in not knowledgeable personally of this being a problem," Greenstein said. "If you have a less precise, knowing surgeon then this would be a further for the patient. It makes reproducible, precise incisions every time". Palanker said further digging will focus on whether laser-guided cataract surgery results in better postoperative perspective than traditional surgery thioquest product. Among the pint-sized group of study participants, he said, there was no significant change in outcomes between the two.