The most advanced implant for correcting cataracts is the light-adjustable lens produced by RxSight. As determined leaders in cataract surgery in Massachusetts, the team at Boston Vision is proud to be the first to offer this lens implant in the state, following our rigorous review of the technology to ensure it’s safe and effective for our patients.
The light-adjustable lens (LAL) is an artificial replacement for a clouded lens that restores your vision and enables you to return to the lifestyle you enjoyed before developing cataracts. The main benefit of the LAL is that it can deliver more finely tuned vision results compared to non-adjustable intraocular lenses (IOLs), while still delivering the long-lasting benefits you expect from cataract surgery.
Advantages of the RxSight Light Adjustable Lens
The light-adjustable lens is the only intraocular lens implant that can be adjusted after cataract surgery. All other IOLs are shaped based on their predicted effect in the eye, which means up to 50% of patients do not achieve the intended vision correction without glasses or contacts.
The clear advantage of the RxSight adjustable lens implant is that our board-certified ophthalmologists can continually tweak the lens to achieve 20/20 vision over the course of a few treatments following your cataract surgery.
How is Cataract Surgery Performed?
Dr. Samir Melki and Dr. Jason Brenner perform the RxSight LAL surgery in our offices throughout Boston and eastern Massachusetts. The light-adjustable lens process begins with a traditional cataract surgery, in which your natural lens is removed and replaced with the RxSight artificial lens. This procedure is painless for nearly all patients, and our doctors may also use numbing drops to ensure your comfort during cataract surgery as well as follow-up light treatments.
How is Vision Corrected with the LAL?
Immediately following cataract surgery, you will likely notice some improvement in your vision; your cataracts will be gone, although your lens won’t be in its final correcting shape. In normal intraocular lens treatments, this is the end of the process, but with the light-adjustable lens, it’s only the halfway point.
Our ophthalmologists will schedule at least two follow-up appointments where you’ll receive light treatment to adjust your lens. This is made possible due to light-sensitive compounds in the lens called macromers. Prior to your first light treatment, these macromers are distributed evenly throughout the lens. When the macromers are exposed to UV light, they link together to form polymers.
This process allows the doctors at Boston Vision to precisely target certain regions of the lens with UV light to create regions of polymers among the otherwise distributed macromers. When the polymers are created, the remaining macromers in the unlit areas physically diffuse into the exposed area, causing a highly predictable change in shape that results in altered vision.
Light treatments, and therefore adjustments of vision, can continue until all the macromers have joined into polymers. Once you and our doctors are satisfied with the vision correction achieved through light treatments, the entire lens will be exposed to UV light, effectively locking in place your customized vision correction.
What to Expect During and Between Light Treatments
Treatments to adjust the RxSight adjustable lens are painless and take an average of 90 seconds. Your first treatment will be scheduled a few weeks after your initial surgery, during which time you’ll need to wear special UV-blocking glasses full-time. The only time you do not need to wear your glasses while awake are during showers in windowless bathrooms; even then, you’ll need to put them on immediately after you’re done. You’ll have two pairs of UV-blocking glasses: one for indoor use (clear) and one for outdoor use (tinted).
LAL patients need at least two and up to four light treatments to create your customized lens shape, and until the final shape has been locked in, will need to continue using the UV-blocking glasses. Light treatments are spaced about three days apart, and our doctors will tell you when you are allowed to stop wearing your special glasses following the final treatment.
Cataract Correction in Boston, Massachusetts
We’re proud and excited to offer RxSight’s light-adjustable lens for people suffering from cataracts in Massachusetts. This advanced technology helps you achieve perfect vision after cataract surgery with fully customizable vision correction techniques. To learn more about this solution, please reach out to the ophthalmologists at Boston Vision. Our team is ready to help you enjoy your life free from cataracts and corrective lenses.
Contact us by calling your nearest location or by filling out a contact form online today. Following an eye exam, we’ll give you a comprehensive guide to your options for laser vision correction, including an LAL procedure.
The Light Adjustable Lens is available at our Brookline, Milford, Medford, Wellesley, and Andover locations.
