Cataract Surgery for LASIK Patients – James S. Lewis, MD

Serving Philadelphia, Conshohocken, the Main Line, King of Prussia, Northeast Philadelphia and Phoenixville

Cataracts will eventually develop in all patients, including those who have had LASIK. In fact, we find that many LASIK patients are less tolerant of even a mild cataract than the general population. Furthermore, early treatment of cataracts often involves changing the prescription in glasses but that defeats the entire purpose of LASIK. Enhancing a LASIK patient who has a refractive change from early cataract development is not good medicine. Finally, LASIK patients may not always wear their sunglasses and thereby hasten cataract development.

Patients who have had RK, Epi-LASIK, LASEK, Advanced Surface Ablation, All Laser LASIK, and the Visian ICL are all subject to early cataract extraction based on the same reasoning. The Visian ICL is somewhat protective because the intraocular collamer lens has built in ultra-violet light protection. Nevertheless, cataracts can and do develop in these patients.

Unlike standard cataract surgery, calculation of the appropriate intraocular lens is considerably more difficult and less predictable in LASIK patients. However, as foremost Philadelphia / Bucks County cataract surgery providers, we have years of experience in this area and have an excellent success rate. Our success is aided by retrieving the pre-operative corneal measurements from our own records or from the original LASIK surgeon. We also use a number of modalities to calculate the effective corneal power, including wavefront topography, RGP contact lens over-refraction, and combined topography-optical coherence tomography. When a refractive error remains after cataract surgery, we can reshape the cornea to achieve both clear vision and spectacle independence in almost all cases.

If you are out of the area or if you have selected another cataract surgeon, we are more than happy to share all your pre-operative refractive data with him/her to optimize your clinical and refractive results.