Go Beyond Single Vision with Premium IOLs for Cataracts

Cataract surgery is already the most successful surgery worldwide with a success rate of a mind-blowing 99 percent. That’s a great statistic since just about everyone gets cataracts — by the age of 65 over 90 percent of people have a cataract. This means the lens of their eye with the cataract is building proteins and is becoming more and more cloudy. Eventually, the cataract will build to the degree that the person will be looking through a dirty window, of sorts, with that eye. And cataracts usually develop in both eyes.

The question is when will the person opt to have cataract surgery to replace the clouded lens with a crystal-clear intraocular lens (IOL). With the high success rates and with the way these procedures improve the patient’s vision, it’s hard to understand why anyone would put off cataract surgery, but some do.

At Millennium Park Eye Center, we perform cataract surgery every day, and we’re thrilled by the new intraocular lens choices available to our patients.

What are the different types of premium IOLs?

“Premium” intraocular lenses have advanced features beyond those found in basic single vision IOLs. While the increased cost of premium IOLs is not covered by Medicare and other types of insurance, their increased benefits make them worth the cost for many of our patients from across Chicago and the Upper Midwest.

The three types of premium IOLs are multifocal, accommodating, and toric. Each has different characteristics for different eye conditions, such as astigmatism (toric).

What are the benefits of premium IOLs?

Technology has really changed the landscape of options when it comes to replacing your cataract-clouded lens with an intraocular lens. The first IOLs were monovision, meaning they corrected for one type of vision, either up close or distance. The patient had to wear eyeglasses to correct for the other. With single vision IOLs, most people choose to correct for distance vision, wearing reading glasses for up close work.

Premium IOLs now offer vision correction at different distances with both accommodating and multifocal IOLs. This means they correct for near- and farsightedness. They also correct for astigmatism with toric IOLs. Recently, toric function was added to multifocal and accommodating IOLs. Premium IOLs also correct for presbyopia, the condition that is almost universal after the age of 40 where the eye has more difficulty focusing for near vision.

What are the benefits of these premium IOLs? Well, it depends on how much you adore your current readers. If you’d love to not have 14 pairs of reading glasses strategically placed throughout your world, having premium IOLs can remove the need for them. This is quite freeing for most people. The ability to correct for astigmatism also removes the need for eyeglasses to correct the areas that were formerly a problem.
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