April 26, 2025
1 min learn
Key takeaways:
- Shock waves have been utilized in medication for a very long time.
- Extracorporeal shock wave remedy might enhance lens elasticity, lens readability and lens quantity.
LOS ANGELES — The way forward for refractive surgical procedure may see ophthalmology welcome sound waves as a therapeutic software, in keeping with a speaker on the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgical procedure assembly.
Within the Roger F. Steinert, MD, Refractive Lecture throughout Refractive Day, Ronald R. Krueger, MD, highlighted a number of the largest breakthroughs over his profession in ocular surgical procedure and seemed to the longer term to see what may come subsequent. Along with procedures comparable to laser sclerociliary translocation and kerato-lenticule extraction (KLEx, also called SMILE), he stated extracorporeal shock wave remedy (ESWT) may have a number of purposes in ophthalmology, together with presbyopia and cataracts.
Picture: Ronald R. Krueger, MD
“Who may have thought extracorporeal shock wave remedy can be utilized to disaggregate laborious tissues and soften them?” he stated. “We all know the lens will get laborious over time. The sclera will get laborious over time. May we use this? The issue is we in ophthalmology take into consideration gentle and surgical instruments as lasers. We don’t take into consideration sound and surgical instruments as shock waves.”
Krueger stated shock waves have been utilized in medication for a very long time, together with in lithotripsy for kidney stones because the Eighties. This know-how has even been utilized in some kind in ophthalmology.
“For those who look again to the earliest posterior capsulotomies that we did with the YAG laser, we have been utilizing shock waves to sever that,” he stated. “However we have been utilizing intracorporeal lasers the place the shock wave and the vitality on the spark and the ionization and the thermal change was taking place inside the attention, not delivering it from the surface in.”
In presbyopia, Krueger stated ESWT has proven promise in bettering lens elasticity in porcine fashions. In cataracts, it helped enhance lens readability and lens quantity.
Krueger stated he may see ophthalmologists doing lodging restoration procedures inside 5 years utilizing a mechanism to ship shock waves into the attention from the surface.
“If it may disaggregate these tissues and it may find yourself lowering a number of the lens quantity, may we have the ability to truly deal with early presbyopes yearly with this to maintain their lodging, to scale back the compaction that comes with age, to limit the truth that lens fibers degrade with compaction and in the end to retard cataract formation?” Krueger stated.
Sources/Disclosures
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Krueger RR. The laser imaginative and prescient correction journey: Step into my time machine. Introduced at: American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgical procedure assembly; April 25-28, 2025; Los Angeles.
Disclosures:
Krueger experiences consulting for Alcon and serving as an unpaid chief medical officer for Senogen.
