Laser Cataract Surgery More Accurate Than Manual.
Cataract surgery, already an very conservative and successful procedure, can be made more specific by combining a laser and three-dimensional imaging, a budding study suggests. Researchers found that a femtosecond laser, in use for many years in LASIK surgery, can cut into delicate eye web more cleanly and accurately than manual cataract surgery, which is performed more than 1,5 million times each year in the United States antehealth. In the ongoing procedure, which has a 98 percent attainment rate, surgeons use a micro-blade to lower a circle around the cornea before extracting the cataract with an ultrasound machine.
The laser methodology uses optical coherence technology to customize each patient's perception measurements before slicing through the lens capsule and cataract, though ultrasound is still worn to remove the cataract itself. "It takes some talent and energy to break the lens with the ultrasound," explained create researcher Daniel Palanker, an associated professor of ophthalmology at Stanford University. "The laser helps to speediness this up and make it safer".
After practicing the laser modus operandi on pig eyes and donated human eyes, Palanker and his colleagues did further experiments to support that the high-powered, rapid-pulse laser would not cause retinal damage. Actual surgeries later performed on 50 patients between the ages of 55 and 80 showed that the laser reduction circles in lens capsules 12 times more faithful than those achieved by the ancestral method. No adverse belongings were reported.
The study, reported in the Nov 17, 2010 emergence of Science Translational Medicine, was funded by OpticaMedica Corp of Santa Clara, Calif, in which Palanker has an open-mindedness stake. The results are being reviewed by the US Food and Drug Administration, while the laser technology, which is being developed by several off the record companies, is expected to be released worldwide in 2011.
