Crystalens

What is Crystalens?
Crystalens is an accommodating intraocular lens that, unlike a standard IOL, can treat both a person’s cataracts and presbyopia – loss of near and intermediate vision. In your 40’s you probably noticed that you started to lose some of your up-close vision and had to start wearing reading glasses. Crystalens not only treats your cataracts, but can also reduce or eliminate your dependence on glasses giving you back your full range of vision. It does so by recreating accommodation similar to your eye’s natural lens. The unique Crystalens can reduce or eliminate glasses for most activities, including: reading a book, working on the computer, and driving a car.

Crystalens was modeled after the human eye. Like the natural lens, it uses the eye muscles to flex and accommodate in order to focus on objects in the environment at all distances. Crystalens dynamically adjusts to your visual needs.

Crystalens is designed to allow the optic, or the central circular part of the lens that you see through, to move back and forth as you constantly change focus on images around you. Crystalens flexes as you focus your vision.

Crystalens was the first presbyopia correcting IOL introduced into the United States market and is currently the only FDA-approved accommodating IOL.

Crystalens addresses the limitations of standard monofocal IOLs and multifocal IOLs by providing the following advantages:

Provides a Broad Range of Vision:
Crystalens moves and changes shape using the eye’s natural focusing mechanism, instead of remaining fixed and stationary within the eye. This movement, or accommodation, allows the eye to focus on objects across as broad range of distances to reduce or eliminate dependence on glasses. In particular, this accommodation provides significant advantages in addressing intermediate vision.

Maintains Clarity of Vision:
Unlike multifocal lenses, Crystalens directs all available light received by the eye to a single focal point, comparable to that of a healthy natural lens.

Patient Adjustment Not Required:
Crystalens produces a single image consistent with normal vision, meaning patients do not need to neuroadapt to view multiple images. Patients also do not need to tolerate or adjust to high levels of halos and glare often associated with multifocal IOLs.

Quick facts

• Patients who are good candidates for standard monofocal IOLs are typically good candidates for Crystalens. If a patient has healthy eyes, has not had previous cataract surgery, and does not suffer from any major health problems, then he or she is likely to be a good candidate.
• More than twice the number of patients implanted with Crystalens could see well at all distances compared to a standard IOL.
• Most Crystalens patients have reduced their dependence on glasses and are able to read the newspaper or a phone book without glasses.
• Most Crystalens patients are able to see their computers, dashboards and anything else at arm’s length without glasses
• Most Crystalens patients are able to see 20/40 or better after surgery, so the clock across the room and the TV in the corner are clearly within sight.
• Many of our Crystalens patients can see well enough to do away with their reading glasses, bifocals, or contact lenses.
• The Crystalens procedure is highly successful and most people regain very good distance vision, somewhere between 20/20 and 20/40.