Refractive Lens Exchange
It's an unavoidable fact of life that aging and reading glasses go hand-in-hand. For most people, it's a fact they would just as soon ignore. The good news is that today there are vision correction options that may be able to reduce or eliminate your dependence on glasses. One of those options is refractive lens exchange, a new approach to vision correction that uses proven surgical techniques to achieve dramatically improved vision for many patients.

With this procedure, we replace your eye's natural lens with a lens implant. Using a sophisticated artificial lens, we may be able to reduce your dependence on reading glasses or bifocals and improve your distance vision. While it sounds like a cutting-edge surgery, in fact, surgeons perform a similar procedure over two million times each year on cataract patients.

Refractive lens exchange bears many similarities to today's cataract surgery. As a medical procedure, cataract surgery is one of safest and most frequently performed procedures today. Cataract surgery, like refractive lens exchange, involves the removal of the natural lens and its replacement with an artificial lens.

To replace the lens, the surgeon makes a micro incision (about 3 mm) under the cornea. The surgeon breaks up the lens using ultrasonic vibrations and then gently removes it from the eye. The natural lens is replaced by an "implantable" lens, which is inserted through the micro incision. Typically, the second eye will be corrected about two weeks after the first procedure is performed.

The best candidates for refractive lens exchange are farsighted patients who need reading glasses or bifocals. These patients typically receive the best visual results after the procedure.  This procedure may also be the right solution if you are too nearsighted or have corneas that are too thin for laser vision correction. It is also a viable alternative for those who want to eliminate their dependence on traditional or progressive bifocals and those who may be showing signs of developing cataracts.