ICLs

Is anyone else unfamiliar with an ICL? Maybe I was surfing the internet that day, but I can't remember ever learning about this from our faculty. Anyway, I comanaged one the other day.

ICL stands for Implantable Collamer Lens. It is literally a phakic IOL - it is inserted into the posterior chamber, in between the iris and the lens/anterior capsule. 

The biggest complication is iris bombe, with resulting pressure spikes, so the surgeons usually place TWO PIs in each eye just to be sure. Post-op management is pretty similar to cataract surgery, except the amount of pigment release from the iris is much more. Oh, and it is pretty trippy to see two additional surface reflections when you looking with a slit lamp.

ICLs are pretty neat - they are theoretically interchangeable, so if someone's Rx changes, they simply do an exchange. The success rates are excellent, with none of the LASIK downsides like irreversibility, haloes, glare, dryness, and aberrations. The only real downside is that the current technology doesn't correct for much astigmatism, but supposedly a solution to this is on the horizon.

Anyone else co-managed one of these yet?

You can learn more here: http://www.visianinfo.com/html/refractive_chart.html