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2 | SUPPLEMENT TO EYEWORLD DAILY NEWS, APRIL 23, 2022 Connecting the dots: Advancements in cataract surgery Introducing the Clareon® IOL collection: A material change and more W hen surgeons implant a mono- focal lens, they want high quality optics and consistency. "You don't want to have negative and positive dysphotopsias. We need centration. We don't want to see surface fibrosis, surface haze, glistenings, subsurface nanoglistenings.* We just want clarity," said David Vroman, MD. That's what Alcon's new Clareon ® IOL offers—and more. Dr. Vroman im- planted his first Clareon ® IOLs as part of the clinical trials in November 2017. In the 4+ years since then, he has reported "spectacular" results. As it is launched, Dr. Vroman said he expects Clareon ® will be "a workhorse IOL to obtain quality vision for the vast majority of patients." Building off AcrySof® The AcrySof ® platform launched in 1994 and was a game changer, according to Dr. Vroman, as it came out as a single-piece acrylic platform. "There have been more than 125 million implants of the AcrySof ® lens," he said. "The things that make the AcrySof ® platform one of the best are the centra- tion, the stable-force haptics, the long- term visual acuities, and the focusing power of the full 6-mm optic." 1,2,3,4 The Clareon ® IOL, FDA approved in 2020, behaves with all the best attributes of AcrySof ® and then some. "With stable-force haptics, it centers nicely. It unfolds and the haptics position more quickly than AcrySof ® , and it comes out and retains a planar configuration almost immediately. The Clareon ® IOL has all the wonderful attributes of an easy in- sertion, great centration that AcrySof ® has with potentially increased clarity. There are a couple of other things with the edge design that may improve some of the dysphotopsia," Dr. Vroman said. A 'remarkable' new material The Clareon ® IOL is an aspheric hydro- phobic acrylic IOL made of a new, pat- ented BioMaterial (acrylate/methacrylate copolymer). 5 Dr. Vroman called the clarity of the Clareon ® IOL "remarkable." "It's spectacular. In the clinical trials, all the patients had to have excellent potential vision. In our clinical trials, the patient satisfaction, our ability to achieve best corrected 20/20 uncorrected vision was in line with norms, 5 so it's been a fantastic monofocal, one-piece lens," Dr. Vroman said. Glistenings are not visually significant but something the surgeon can see on examination. Dr. Vroman said the Clareon ® IOL material is glistening-free* in his patients. The material change, while not a huge leap in IOL design, is an important one, Dr. Vroman continued. "It has improved quality of the optics. It's almost hard to see the lens in an undi- lated eye," he said. Surgeons are at a point where patient expectations are so high that even slight improvements on rare or minimal com- plaints are helpful. "If you can't deliver on any one of those things—the preop experience, the surgical experience, or the lens they're going to live with—the patient expecta- tions are so high that you're going to fail. Every component has to be premium, and this lens adds to the premium experi- ence," he said. "Once we have a toric and PanOptix® [Alcon] on this, we're going to have a better ability to achieve and meet the patient expectations of the small, crit- ical number who have some issues. We're successful with our high-demand patients, and the Clareon® IOL gives us an extra margin of improvement." 'Precision-edge' haptic design While rare, some patients receiving mono- focal IOLs experience positive and/or negative dysphotopsia. The Clareon ® IOL aims to reduce this with a new square, "precision-edge" haptic design. 5,6 "The precision-edge design that Alcon created is a unique design that's intended to decrease positive dysphotopsia," Dr. Vroman said. "They've created a design to address these uncommon problems." He added that the visual disturbance is not common enough yet to determine if this edge design is making a difference. continued on page 3 David Vroman, MD

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