SAN DIEGO, Calif. (Ivanhoe Newswire) – The American Academy of Ophthalmology said cataracts affect nearly 25 million people over 40. Three to four million of them have surgery to fix the clouded, dim vision cataracts cause every year. Now a cutting-edge lens is now making all the difference for some patients.
Sixty-five-year-old Marc Burch thought his days of reading an iPad without glasses were gone. Cataracts had clouded his vision and reading wasn’t the only problem.
Burch told Ivanhoe, “It was embarrassing before, cause would go and I’d see the menu, but I couldn’t exactly see real clearly what everything was. So I’d get salads all the time.”
He laughs at it now, but Burch was serious about fixing the cataracts with a lens that allowed him to live his active lifestyle.
Burch waited a year and a half for the FDA to approve the Symfony intraocular lens.
Sandy T. Feldman, M.D., the Medical Director of Clearview Eye and Laser Medical Center in San Diego, California, detailed, “Symfony is the first class of an extended range of vision lens where it can give you the distance and intermediate and reading vision and it also corrects astigmatism.”
During surgery, Dr. Feldman removed the clouded lens and inserted the symfony lens. She said it’s a good option for active adults.
Dr. Feldman said, “We’ve got computers, tablets, smart phones, and we want to see everything. In addition to the menus when we go out. We want to play golf, we want to ski, we want to do all the types of activities that Marc does.”
Burch said the procedure was pain-free and the only downside was having to wait two weeks to have his second eye done.
The Symfony lens also makes it easier for users to transition from day to night vision and it produces less of the halo or glare effect other lenses can cause. It is considered a premium lens, and most insurance companies will not cover the difference between a Symfony lens and a standard, monofocal lens.
Contributors to this news report include: Cyndy McGrath Supervising Producer; Wendy Chioji, Field Producer; Milvionne Chery, Assistant Producer; Roque Correa, Editor; Rusty Reed, Videographer.
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