Cataract Surgery Lens Implant Options
♫ Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010Cataract surgery lens implant options have have changed over recent years to offers you more choice as to how to correct your vision after surgery. The only choice used to be a clear lens to replace the removed lens and coke-bottle glasses to be able to see well. Intraocular lens implants (IOLs) have changed that by allowing the surgeon to replace the clouded cataract lens with a corrective lens. There are also options as to what type of lens to use depending on what type of vision you want to have after surgery. Do you want monovision, monofocal, multifocal, accomodating, or Toric?
Monovision. Monovision is not a lens, but a type of correction. It means one eye is corrected for close vision and the other for far vision.Many people adapt well to this type of correction, especially if they have been wearing contact lenses with this type of correction previous to surgery.
Monofocal. A monofocal lens has one power of correction and is usually used to correct either nearsightedness or farsightedness, similar to contact lens correction.
Multifocal. Multifocal lenses have 2 different powers of correction, one in the center and the other power in the periphery so the eye can be corrected for both near and far vision. Similar to the concept of bifocal glasses.
Accomodating. Accomodating implants are made to change shape when you focus on something close up like reading. Similar to monofocal lenses in that they only have one power of correction.
Toric. Toric lens implants have 2 focus points instead of one, similar to multifocal lenses. These are used to correct astigmatism like your glasses, but within the eye itself. The Toric lens implant will not correct close or far vision unless set for monovision.
As you can see there are so many options for cataract surgery lens implants than there used to be. Talk to your eye surgeon about which option would work best for you.
