EW SHOW DAILY
66
O
n Monday morning, David
Chang, MD, and Richard
Hoffman, MD, will lead a
symposium of refractive IOL
experts on reducing the amount of
refractive error in refractive IOL pa-
tients.
According to Dr. Chang, "When
it comes to patient satisfaction, we
cataract surgeons have historically
been spoiled. Who among us tires of
hearing patients rave about how
easy and painless the operation was;
how quickly the vision improved;
and how color, brightness, and un-
corrected vision are so surprisingly
good? Indeed, we've become very
accustomed to routinely exceeding
the expectations of our cataract pa-
tients."
"Many cataract surgeons do not
have a viable strategy for addressing
residual spherical error and astigma-
tism in their refractive cataract
patients. Several factors might po-
tentially inhibit cataract surgeons
from referring their patients to col-
leagues for keratorefractive laser
enhancement. One might be the
inability to control or specify cost.
Another is a concern that patients
will perceive that 'something went
wrong' if they are transferred to an-
other surgeon's care. However, imag-
ine keratorefractive surgeons trying
to perform LASIK without the op-
tion or ability to enhance the initial
result. In my opinion, this is the
missing part of many refractive
cataract surgeons' armamentarium.
If you or someone in your practice
doesn't perform PRK or LASIK, then
I recommend establishing a relation-
ship with someone in your commu-
nity who does. Patients must then
be prepared up front for the possibil-
ity of being referred to that surgeon
for an enhancement (along with the
estimated cost)," said Dr. Chang.
Exciting data has just come in
from all ASCRS members who regis-
tered to attend this program in ad-
vance. When asked if a multifocal
IOL patient has no residual refrac-
tive error and a healthy ocular sur-
face, only 40% believe that the
chances of the patient having signif-
icant dysphotopsia was 5% or less.
In another question about two-
thirds of respondents believed that
the highest amount of residual re-
fractive error in a multifocal patient
was 0.5 D of sphere and cylinder.
Topics covered in the sympo-
sium will include the following:
• Review the impact that various
amounts of residual spherical and
cylinder error have on quality of
vision and satisfaction levels of
refractive IOL patients – Scott
MacRae, MD
• Correlating the impact of residual
refractive error on patient satisfac-
Saturday, April 20, 2013
EyeWorld Education
New symposium to attend: Managing residual
refractive errors following refractive IOL
by Brad Fundingsland EyeWorld Educational Development Group
continued on page 67