Adnkronos Rome, June 12 (Adnkronos Salute) – "I have been wearing phakic intraocular lenses (Icl) for almost 30 years because they have given me a lot of guarantees over time, for the very compatible material, but also for the changes made to improve the quality of the product, the design, the shape, the diameter. It is very important for us surgeons to know that the product", in addition to making you see well again "within a day, lasts in the eye for a long time and does not cause any inconvenience, no side effects".
Lucio Buratto, ophthalmologist, medical director and surgeon at Neovision Cliniche Oculistiche, Milan, among the first to try this surgery for the treatment of patients with myopia, explains that, "once the patients have been carefully chosen, I am very calm. The product we use has a very, very good visual quality but, above all, it is also very biocompatible. The patient tolerates it very well". Of course, "like all procedures it must be performed well - he adds - I believe this applies to everything: both driving a car and having surgery. Once this surgery is done, the patient can hardly see it anymore because he does not need many checks. It is enough to check the retina and the situation of the eye every now and then, but I would say that checking the lens is almost marginal". ()
"We almost always put ICL lenses in myopes – explains the surgeon – in severe myopes for sure, in medium myopes very often and, sometimes, even in milder myopes. It is a lens that is gaining more and more space compared to refractive surgery because it does not modify the tissues, it does not change the situation of the eye, indeed it is also reversible if the patient is not happy. But in my experience up to now it has never happened".
In general, "if we operate on a 2-3 diopter myopic patient - Buratto specifies - laser procedures are definitely the best. If we go to 6-7 diopters, the visual quality that the Icl offers is superior to that of a laser refractive procedure. So you have to evaluate the eye, the situations. In the most severe myopic patient - he underlines - there is no other procedure. It is a procedure for myopes of 10, 15, even 20 diopters that works very well. Obviously you have to do all the eye exams to know what the various characteristics are: the depth of the eye, the length, the diameter, the radius of curvature. Based on this data, you order the lens that is personalized for each individual patient and this is also an important aspect in my opinion".
Returning to the surgery, "in expert hands it is very simple, even short, it lasts about 10 minutes - describes the ophthalmologist - A small hole is made on the temporal side of the eye, a protective substance is introduced, the lens is positioned correctly, the protective substance is removed and no stitches are given. I expect that, for a day or two, the patient's vision will be a little blurry because he has just been operated on, because the pupil is dilated, etc. But on the second day after the surgery he already sees well and is without glasses. I do not operate on short-sighted patients unless I am almost absolutely certain that I will be able to remove the glasses, and with these Icl lenses - concludes Buratto - I can do it".
This is confirmed by Chiara, a patient who, less than a month after the operation, recalls that "even the pre-op was very calm because the instructions given were very clear. I was very short-sighted - she says - so I was advised to resort to this procedure instead of the laser which would have removed a lot of tissue from my eye". The operation "allowed me to keep my eye intact and, already the next day, I could see very well, I didn't feel any pain. Comparing myself with friends who had had the laser, I discovered that", compared to them, "who had had a fairly annoying post-op, mine was absolutely not. The afternoon after the operation - she says - I went out with sunglasses, calmly. Now it's a dream, in the sense that I get up, I can see, I don't have to wear contact lenses anymore".