Crystalens

[meachna1]

Having cataract surgery soon.  Is there anyone out there that is pleased with their Crystens?

[KayakerNC]

I have the Trulign IOL (Crystalens Toric) in both eyes.  My 1st surgery was September 2014 and I am one of the happy campers regarding my vision.  Distance, intermediate, and close vision are all good.  No glasses required even for low-light situations.  
My out-of-pocket costs came to about $2250 for each eye ($4500 total) using Medicare and BCBS.  I opted for the laser assist to increase my odds of a better result.
Yep, I'm happy.

[NightHawkGuy]

@KayakerNC, great to read about your Trulign success experience and it still working great after nearly 3 years!
I got my first consultation this week and cost estimates out here in southern California are nearly double what you paid unfortunately, at one of the best local eye clinics that uses femtolaser assist and ORA, plus the higher price includes what they call a "Premium package" which seems like kind of a insurance for 1 year including no extra cost laser touchups or whatever needed to get the refraction results spot on.

I happened to get an email from a former co-worker/boss of mine and I learned he got Crystalens IOLs in both of his eyes a few years ago at the same eye clinic I got the consultation at and he highly recommend them and the eye   surgeons there. He too has great results after over 2 years with the accomodating IOLs and said he can see great at distance, intermediate, and only uses 1D reading glasses rarely for fine print close up or in lower light.

How is your night vision with the Trulign torics?  Any artifacts around lights like halos, circles, starbursts, etc at all?

Is the contrast sensitivity nearly as good with Trulign/Crystalens as other aspheric monofocal IOLs, considering I read that it doesn't correct to the same degree of spheric abberation of the cornea as Alcon and Tecnis IOLs. I wonder if that is really noticeable a difference though. Supposed to make the image a bit sharper, but can reduce depth of field, so its a tradeoff.

I wish B&L had higher cylinder models of Trulign available however.  Currently the highest cylinder model they have is 1.83D (corneal plane) and my right eye is quite a bit higher, probably close to 4D cylinder on the cornea.  So in order for me to get a Trulign I would have to get my eye surgeon to use laser LRI or Lasik in addition to the toric IOL to reduce the astigmatism sufficiently.  

Due to that reason, she would of course prefer to go with a monofocal toric IOL (they use the Alcon Acrysof IQ Toric) which has higher cylinder models, up to 4D.  Though if I went that route, I'd prefer the Tecnics Toric IOL which has the clearer (not yellow) and better contrast sensitivy and   no glistenings issues, compared to the Alcon IOL.  So I would have to try to either do the Trulign plus laser operations or get the Tecnics Toric which they haven't used before (though they use other Tecnis IOLs like the Symfony and their multifocal IOLs).  Or I could go to another eye clinic that does offer all the IOLs, but they don't have femtolaser so it would be the manual blade surgery, though they do have ORA for verifying refractive results in realtime.

[JohnHaganMD]

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[NightHawkGuy]

A past co-worker of mine today told me had cataract eye surgery a few years ago and got the Crystalens in both eyes.  He was only in his 50s, and his eyes got cataracts early due to effects from lasers he had worked with years before.

He discovered that with the Crystalens he could see some ultraviolet light from a UV source they had at work, nobody else could "see" it.  He went back to the eye surgeon and they were confounded.  This was an earlier model of the crystalens that must have had not filtered out all of the UV spectrum.  They replaced both his IOLs with a newer version of the crystalens and apparently that version filters out more of the UV for him.

I wonder if there are any other IOL types that let thru some UV? I know the Alcon IOLs not only filter out UV but some of the blue specturm as well.

[JohnHaganMD]

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[John C Hagan III, MD, FACS, FAAO]

One reason about the number posted is that Crystalens HD has emerged as the #1 "Premium" IOL selling I believe more than ReSTOR and the out dated REZOOM combined.
JCH MD

[mgrody]

There seems to be mostly heartburn posted about Crystalens on this site.  Notable exceptions include Dr. Hagen's article about the Crystalens HD and Dr.Oyakawa's posts about selecting a Crystalens for himself.  My own experience with Crystalens has been positive following implants in both eyes.  I have very good distant vision (20/25 and 20/30), superb intermediate vision ( 20/20 both), and excellent near vision (J1 and J2).  I sometimes wear weak reading glasses when reading a  book because it seems that my eyes get tired.  but, I usually don't wear glasses at all.  I have experienced no halos, flashes, or other such problems.  However, I do seem to be more sensitive to glare and wear non-prescription sunglasses frequently when outdoors in sunshine.  Based on my experience I would make the same decision again.

[John C Hagan III, MD, FACS, FAAO]

Use the search feature and archives: there are several hundred responses you can pull up and read from people wildly happy and ecstatic to people that rue the day they had a Crystalens put in the eye.

JCH MD