These are essentially like placing a contact lens permanently inside the eye so you don’t have to put them in and out eye daily, weekly, or monthly, along with all the cleaning, storage and lens care that goes with contacts.
IOLs are made of perspex, do not degrade, and so last for a lifetime. They do not need replacing.
Phakic IOLS are essentially like placing a contact lens permanently inside the eye so you don’t have to put them in and out eye daily, weekly, or monthly, along with all the cleaning, storage and lens care that goes with contacts. But the phakic IOL can always be removed later if required, which is one of the best things about them.
Phakic IOLs are the only completely reversible vision correction procedure. We use the Staar Visian ICL version VC where possible. This lens is a significant improvement on earlier phakic IOLs. It is placed behind the pupil where you cant see it, in a 20 minute procedure performed under anaesthetic drops and sedation in our day procedure centre.
The risk of the procedure is low, and the recovery of vision very fast and quality of vision obtained excellent. This lens is often used for those patients who require a vision correction greater than even modern lasers can be safely used for, ie patients who are very long or very short sighted, or for whom laser vision correction is not suitable because of thin corneas, dry eye, or other reasons.
