Implantable Contact Lens

Dallas, Texas

Are you tired of dealing with eyeglasses or contact lenses? If you would like improved vision but have been told you are not a good LASIK candidate, the Visian ICL™ could be a good choice. It is a quick easy procedure and gives high quality vision. The Food and Drug Administration approved the Visian ICL in 2005 for correcting myopia (nearsightedness). There are no implantable contact lenses for correcting hyperopia.

What is the Visian ICL?

ICL stands for Implantable Collamer Lens. The ICL is a type of intraocular lens (IOL) known as a phakic IOL, meaning that the eye's natural lens is left in place when the ICL is implanted.

Dr. Carter would insert it folded up and then position it in front of the lens to correct your eye's refractive error. It can be left in position indefinitely. It is not visible to anyone who looks at you, as it is behind the iris (colored part). Nor can you feel it in your eye. It is in an internal space called the posterior chamber and blends in nicely with the other eye structures.

What is Collamer?

The Visian ICL, made by the STAAR Surgical Company, consists mostly of collagen, a substance found throughout the body. Collamer is their name for the modified collagen used. The eye's natural lens is also made of collagen and remains transparent because the collagen is structured in parallel fibers. The ICL is very similar.

Collamer is biocompatible. It attracts a substance in the eyes called fibronectin, which collects in a thin layer around the ICL. This makes the ICL "invisible" to your body and it is not rejected as "foreign". Collamer also has a mild negative ionic charge – as do the proteins in the eye. The eye tissue around the ICL's periphery is slightly pushed away from the ICL by this mutual negativity, and this keeps the ICL transparent for light to travel through and clean of any build-up.

How Myopia Works

As light enters the eye, myopic or not, it passes through the cornea first (front clear part) and then through the pupil to the crystalline lens. Both the cornea and lens bend (refract) the light to focus it on the retina at the back of the eye and give you clear images.

When the light is coming from a close object like the novel you are reading, it needs to be refracted more than light coming from the tree outside the window. That is why myopic eyes can see close objects clearly but more distant objects look blurry.

Myopic eyes bend light sharply and cannot bend it less because the cornea is too steep. A steeply curved lens bends light at sharper angles than a flatter lens, focusing it more quickly. So, relative to the steep corneal curvature, a myopic eyeball is too long and light is focused before it gets to the retina.

How the ICL Works to Correct Myopia

The ICL is a third lens to help the myopic eye see clearly in the distance. It decreases light refraction to correct the over-refraction of a myopic eye. Your ICL will be designed to compensate precisely for the amount of myopia you have. It is like wearing your glasses or contacts inside the eyes, where they will never get lost or broken and never need cleaning.

Incoming light will be sharply bent by the steep corneal curvature, then it will be a little "unbent" by the ICL before it is again bent by the lens. The lens changes its curvature according to how distant an object is but the cornea does not. The ICL can mediate between the two and you end up with clear vision at all distances.

ICL Advantages

The Visian ICL can correct a very wide range of nearsightedness. If you have severe myopia, even as severe as -15.00 diopters, you can still be a good candidate.

The Visian ICL is designed to give both sharp vision and superior visual quality. Sharp vision, called visual acuity, is the ability to see detail clearly. Quality of vision refers to other vision features such as depth perception, color contrast, and low-light vision. The ICL can give you vision as good as a Custom LASIK procedure can give, and better according to some.

Further advantages are:

• Your vision improvement after an ICL procedure is immediate. There is no waiting for vision to gradually improve.
• Because the Visian ICL is folded when inserted, Dr. Carter needs to make only a very small opening for it (about one tenth of an inch). This shortens the healing time and you will be fully recovered in just one or two days.
• The Visian ICL procedure is reversible. This is in contrast to LASIK, which makes a permanent change to the eye's cornea, and to other IOLs such as Crystalens® or ReSTOR® which require removal of the natural lens. The ICL can be removed without doing any damage to your eye, and in fact, if you develop cataracts when you are past mid-life, it would have to be removed. Cataracts are treated by replacing the natural lens and after that procedure you would not need the ICL.
• To protect your eyes from the sun's harmful UV rays, the Visian ICL has a blocker that will stop UVA and UVB rays from entering your eyes. This can help prevent later development of UV-related eye disorders.

ICL Candidacy

The best candidates for the Visian ICL are older than 21, with generally healthy vision, who suffer from moderate to severe nearsightedness. Individuals with thin corneas or certain systemic illnesses may not be good candidates. Only your eye doctor can determine if the Visian ICL is the best way to correct your myopia.

If you are nearsighted to any degree and would like to know more about the Visian ICL, please call or email our vision correction office today for a free consultation. We serve Dallas, Texas, and we hope to meet with you soon.