New hardware now available in Springfield provide patients a better look at the world with the tap of a button.
Since Feb. 9, Sunshine Eye Clinic, 1441 E. Sunshine St., has offered high-tech bifocals from Roanoke, Va.-based PixelOptics. These spectacles, called emPower, are equipped with microchips, tiny batteries and transparent crystal liquid, and they allow wearers to “zoom in” at the touch of a button at their temples. A second takes away the increased power.
“They’ve got a pouch of liquid silicone that have been put into the lens itself,” said Dr. Bary Brown of Sunshine Eye Clinic. “Whenever liquid silicon has an electric current go through it, the material changes the index prescription a person would see as they view through the glasses.”
Apparently, Springfield is ahead of the curve in terms of availability of the new lenses.
Dr. Lee Duffner, clinical correspondent with the American Academy of Ophthalmology and professor of ophthalmology with Bascom Palmer Eye Institute at the University of Miami, is aware of the electronic glasses but hasn’t yet seen them in the southeastern tip of the U.S.
“There were some press releases that came in and said ‘These are imminent, get on board with these,’ but I don’t know any optician around here that has them,” Duffner said.
Scott Crosby, manager of Sunshine Eye Clinic, said the decision to add the emPower lenses was driven by a desire to give patients more options for improving their vision.
“We’re not just out pursuing gadgets,” Crosby said. “We’re finding solutions to take care of our patients’ needs. You’re always going to have your distant and intermediate glasses, but these actually adjust to your reading vision.”
Many farsighted patients turn to bifocals or no-line progressive lenses to improve vision, Brown said, but he noted that these options have shortcomings.
“The problem people are having with progressive bifocals – even a really good one – is that there is a fairly narrow space in the section you view a computer with, and people have to move their heads to see the monitor, rather than their eyes,” Brown said. “It creates a lot of neck aches, and people get a lot of distortion and waviness in their vision with a no-line lens.”
Brown noted that there have been some improvements in no-line bifocal lenses.
“They have a gradual increase in power between the top and bottom. The lenses have less distortion and are easier to adjust to. No lens is for everybody, but the acceptance rate in the last two years has gone up, up, up.”
Brown – an emPower user himself – said the electronic lenses help mitigate these problems and can be used for everyday wear, computer usage or for adjusting vision between teeing off on the green and reading the scorecard. Brown said the glasses must be recharged every two to three days.
“It’s not like you have to power up the lens every time you turn around,” Brown added.
Brown expects that eyewear infused with electronics will eventually become the norm.
“This is special,” Brown said. “I was told by the end of this year there’s going to be a transitional lens that will darken. We’re also going to see different frame designs and stronger power ranges. I expect this is here to stay.”
Duffner isn’t so sure.
“Just talking to a couple people informally who have seen the prototypes, it seems more like a gimmick than something that’s practical,” he said. “We were told initially they were going to be available for sale, but they haven’t shown up (in Miami).”
As of March 1, Crosby said Sunshine Eye Clinic hadn’t sold any of the emPower glasses, which retail for $1,250. He noted, however, that the clinic has been getting calls about the lenses from patients in the Kansas City area, where the product isn’t yet available.
Those who have vision problems but don’t necessarily want to wear glasses can consider other advances in eye care, Brown said, pointing to bifocal contact lenses that have a one-month life cycle. Those contacts have been available at Sunshine Eye Clinic for about a year and have an annual price tag of about $250, he said.
Surgical vision correction is another option that can help patients avoid wearing glasses, and there have been advances in that realm, too.
Dr. Thomas Prater of Mattax-Neu-Prater Eye Center, 1265 E. Primrose St., said cataract surgery is likely the most common eye operation performed in Springfield.
“With cataract surgery, we remove the lens of the eye and replace it with an artificial lens,” Prater said. “We now have some newer lenses that let us not just correct the vision, but decrease the stigmatism, decrease the nearsightedness and let people function better without glasses, in some cases, than they could before.”
Prater said doctors at Mattax-Neu-Prater perform several thousand cataract surgeries a year, and the procedure is generally covered by insurance.
Peering into the future, Prater expects approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the next six to eight months for new surgical techniques to treat glaucoma.
“Glaucoma is a condition where pressure in the eye is high,” Prater said. “We’re seeing the development of some new drainage devices. They’re titanium tubes that can be placed in the eye to reduce the pressure to facilitate the drainage of fluid from the eye.”
Prater said laser-assisted vision surgery, or Lasik, is the most common refractive surgical procedure at his practice, and he noted that lasers have replaced microtome, the mechanical cutting tools associated with conventional Lasik procedures.
“The big change in technology with the Lasik is the use of the femtosecond laser,” Prater said. “That laser has been out for two or three years and it lets us create a microscopic incision to perform the Lasik procedure. Our accuracy is now down to microns or nanometers, not just millimeters.”
With prices ranging from $2,200 to $2,400 per eye, Lasik is expensive, but there is little risk, said Prater, noting Mattax-Neu-Prater has a success rate of more than 95 percent.
When it comes to choosing how to handle vision correction, Brown said the solution depends on the patient.
“We look at several things like vision problem, thickness of the cornea and lifestyle,” Brown said. “Everybody has their standards. We have to understand what they are and say, ‘There’s a lot of choices – now let’s review them and see what’s best for you.’”[[In-content Ad]]
