gms | German Medical Science

The development of the technology of intraocular lenses becomes apparent with a high variability in the last years. Regarding the lens material hydrophobic acrylic lenses have established as superior. More and more manufacturers enter the market with their own hydrophobic acrylic material. Hence with those the difficulty with so called glistenings is a constantly recurring issue.

With the lens designs care is taken more and more to have the incision size below 2 mm with appropriate injectors also in routine operation. More and more manufacturers offer so called pre-loaded systems for that. With monofocal lenses aspheric lens designs have established as standard. Different approaches are available concerning the asphericity of the lens. By changes of the asphericity or with the application of diffractive principles there is a transition between premium (enhanced depth of focus) lenses and monofocal lenses, which dissociate from classical multifocal lenses (diffractive/refractive). In the last years various ways have been followed and quite a lot of research funds have been invested in the accommodative lenses. But realistically no one reckons with a change of paradigm in the next few years. Especially lenses are relatively highly developed which are correcting at least the far and intermediate distances, but which are still showing problems with the “pure accommodation”.

Comparing the lenses which have been on the market 10 years ago with those who are on the market today considerable further developments are seen on the one hand, but on the other hand also a certain consistency concerning lens design, material and basic optical principles.