Can accommodation be restored to the presbyopic eye? « Vision …

Join us at the next Oxyopia lecture

4:00 – 5:00pm, April 24, 2013 in 489 Minor Hall

Can accommodation be restored to the presbyopic eye?

presented by

Adrian Glasser, PhD
Professor of Optometry and Vision Sciences and Biomedical Engineering, Benedict/Pitts Professor
College of Optometry, University of Houston

 

There is considerable and growing interest in understanding if accommodation can be restored to the presbyopic eye. If accommodation is to be restored, this requires a sound understanding of the accommodative anatomy, the accommodative mechanism and the causes of presbyopia. When the eye makes an effort to focus at near, the ciliary muscle contracts and releases zonular tension around the lens equator to allow the elastic lens capsule to mould the young lens into a more spherical and accommodated form. With increasing age, lens stiffness increases exponentially; however, the ciliary muscle continues to contract with an accommodative effort even in the presbyopic eye. Therefore, if the presbyopic lens can be replaced with an artificial accommodative intraocular lens (IOL) that is capable of undergoing an increase in optical power with an accommodative effort, it may be possible to restore accommodation to the presbyopic eye. Accommodating intraocular lenses would ideally permit the true, dynamic accommodative capacity to be restored to the presbyopic eye. Accommodative IOLs are designed to be surgically implanted in the eye to induce a change in optical power of the eye consequent to ciliary muscle contraction. Accommodation could be produced in a number of different ways with an IOL including through a forward movement of a single optic IOL, increased separation of dual optic IOLs or through a change in lens surface curvatures, for example. There are a number of different designs of so called accommodative IOLs that are in early stage development or in clinical trials, some of which may hold promise for the future.

 

Host: Austin Roorda

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