San Diego Ophthalmology - June 2011
New revolutionary technology, initially pioneered in the LASIK eye surgery procedure known as femtosecond laser technology will now be available for use during cataract surgery. These new lasers could potentially hit the market by 2012 and Dr. Richard Leung might be on of San Diego's first ophthalmologists to receive this device.
Phacoemulsification cataract surgery has been around for many years and is an excellent standard of care for many cataract patients. This was initially invented by Charles Kelman, MD in 1967. This technology was microsurgery and enabled ophthalmologists to perform surgery through a tiny incision where the cataract could be vacuumed out and replaced with an artificial intraocular lens implant. Although phacoemulsification is considered to be the current state of the art cataract removal technique, many steps in the cataract procedure are still performed manually with either a surgical blade, a bent needle or forceps. The proposed blameless laser cataract surgery with the femtosecond laser can now perform these steps adding a greater amount of precision, safety and improved visual outcome to the entire cataract procedure. There are several manufacturing companies producing these machines in clinical work performed by US ophthalmologists.
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