Quality Eye Care
Overview
State-of-the-art cataract surgery is what Quality Eye Care delivers. Small incision, no-stitch cataract surgery provides fast and painless visual rehabilitation. Small incision surgery allows the use of the latest in foldable lens implant technology. There has been a revolution in lens technology, including the Symfony and Synergy lens platforms, which make distance and near vision possible. The Crystalens and its astigmatism-correcting version, the Trulign, is also available to address both distance and near needs. The TecnisToric implant can correct astigmatism, is also available to meet both distance and reading needs.
Quality Eye Care has at its disposal, the gold standard of optical biometers, the Haag-Streit Lenstar LS900, the Atlas topographer, and the Ziemer Galilei tomographer, for preoperative cataract diagnostic testing. Dr. Yu utilizes the Holladay IOL Consultant software program, the Hill formula and the Barrett formula, to fine-tune the accuracy of the lens implant power selected for his patients. All of this assures you of the best possible result.
Symfony™
The Symfony™ lens platform uses advanced, extended-depth- of-focus optics in such a way as to provide excellent distance and intermediate vision, and some measure of reading vision, without the compromises sometimes seen with the true multifocal implants. The Synergy lens platform uses true multifocal optics to provide good distance, intermediate, and near, but some patients may notice nighttime starburst and halos; the vision, while good, may not be razor-sharp. Sometimes, where appropriate, the Symfony™ can be used in one eye, and Synergy™ in the other eye, to combine the best features (and minimize the drawbacks) of both types of implants. The Symfony™ and Synergy™ lens implants should generally only be used in patients who do not have significant macular degeneration or other eye conditions that can compromise the quality of vision
Crystalens ®
The Crystalens® implant is a sophisticated implant that provides a continuous range of vision, from distance to intermediate, to near. This implant bends or flexes like a normal human lens, to create extra focusing power. While the distance and intermediate vision is excellent, reading vision may not be as sharp; however, the reading vision can be strengthened by modifying the power of the lens in the non-dominant eye. The Trulign® implant is a version of the Crystalens® that can correct astigmatism. The Crystalen® Trulign® platform are very forgiving lenses in the sense that they can be safely used in patients with other eye conditions such as macular degeneration.
Tecnis® Toric
One of the factors that can limit the sharpness of uncorrected vision (without glasses) after cataract surgery, is astigmatism. What is astigmatism? Astigmatism is an uneven curvature of the cornea. Like nearsightedness or farsightedness, astigmatism can make the vision blurry. It’s easier to understand this concept by first asking the question, what does it mean to not have astigmatism? In simplistic terms, if there is no astigmatism, the cornea of the eye (see Tour of the eye) is shaped like a baseball cut in half. The curvature or steepness of the resulting half-dome is the same regardless of the direction from which it is viewed (imagine a miniature version of you walking around the circumference of this half-dome). Compare this to a cornea which is similar to a football cut in half lengthwise (in the long direction, through both pointy ends). The curvature of the cornea in the long direction (along the seams) is not as steep as along the short direction. Such a cornea focuses light, not at a single point, but at 2 points. Someone who has uncorrected astigmatism may see images that are fuzzy and doubled. The Tecnis®Toric implant can correct astigmatism to sharpen your vision.
Dropless™
With Dropless™, the need for eye drop medications typically used after eye surgery is reduced or eliminated. With the Dropless™ method, at the time of surgery, the medications are administered directly into the eye, and sometimes, into the outside tissues of the eye. The benefit of the Dropless™ method is that far fewer eye drops are needed after surgery. As a result, there are fewer costs related to the purchase of expensive eye drop medications, less issues with forgetting to use the eye drops or not getting the drops into the eye, and less risk of adverse side-effects from eye drops. The usual eye drop medication regimen calls for up to four weeks of treatment, with as many as three different types of medications.
In the U.S., medications are approved for very specific indications, by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Of the three different classes of eye drop medications typically used after cataract surgery, no antibiotics have been approved specifically to prevent postoperative infection. There are many antibiotic eye drops which have been approved for the treatment of conjunctivitis or ordinary eye infection (a superficial infection or “pink eye”), but none to prevent a more serious infection inside the eyeball after cataract surgery. When doctors use medications for a purpose not approved by the FDA, this is termed “off-label”. The off-label use of an antibiotic (only approved for treating “pink eye”), to prevent infection after cataract surgery should not be taken to mean it is necessarily unsafe or ineffective, simply that no studies have been done by the drug company to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of the medication used in this manner. So while the use of an antibiotic eye drop after surgery to prevent infection is not FDA-approved and there are no studies demonstrating that it actually reduces the risk of infection after cataract surgery, its use after cataract surgery has become customary for the vast majority of doctors. The Dropless™ method has not been FDA-approved, but there are two studies, one European and one American, that demonstrated that the administration of antibiotic medications directly into the eye at the time of cataract surgery is effective at preventing eye infections. The U.S. study found that the risk of infection inside the eye dropped 22-fold when the antibiotic was directly placed inside the eye.
Are you a candidate for Dropless™ with your cataract surgery? Ask your eye doctor.
Dr. Yu was one of the first doctors in Michigan, and the first doctor in the Dearborn and Downriver areas to use the DroplessTM technique.