During cataract surgery or lens replacement surgery, your eye care provider will replace your eye’s cloudy or inflexible lens with a new intraocular lens – an IOL. The goal of the IOL is to give you the best visual outcome based on your lifestyle and your eyes’ shape and health.

While there are many IOL options, some, like the monofocal lens, will only correct vision at one distance and may require you to wear glasses at other distances. Other IOLs allow correction at multiple distances, but require the eye to refocus when shifting between each distance.

New extended depth-of-focus IOLs provide a continuous full range of vision, allowing you to see clearly at near, intermediate, and far distances and to change focus comfortably. This is especially helpful for people who have presbyopia – the gradual inability to focus up close – and who would like to reduce their dependency on glasses. There is also a version available to correct astigmatism.

The extended depth-of-focus IOL is revolutionary because in addition to correcting vision at multiple distances, it can also minimize some of the negative symptoms commonly experienced with multifocal IOLs, such as glare and halos around lights. This is because of the distinct focal points of the multifocal IOL, whereby lights appear blurry in distances that are out of focus. Since the extended depth-of-focus IOL corrects vision continuously along the entire range of vision, it minimizes these negative side effects, which can be bothersome during nighttime driving.

Other IOLs may also cause what is called chromatic aberration, a blurry “rainbow” effect around some images caused by the eye’s dispersion of light, similar to a prism. The extended depth-of-focus IOL has been engineered to correct these issues by bringing dispersed light to a single focal point. This achromatic technology results in increased contrast sensitivity and sharp, crisp vision.

You have choices when it comes to your vision. Ask us today whether an extended depth-of-focus IOL is right for you.