(November 1, 2005) — One of the best parts about Dr. Kenneth Lindahl's job is seeing some of his elderly patients with cataracts enter surgery and then come out of the operating room without having to wear glasses.

"There was a 79-year-old patient sitting up reading a newspaper without glasses after the surgery," Lindahl said. "It's also great for doctors; we have fun. I can't see up close and these people are reading better than I am."

Lindahl and Dr. Mark Jacobson, ophthalmologists at the Rochester Eye Center, are among the first in the Rochester area to perform implantations of the AcrySof ReStor intraocular lens marketed by Alcon Inc., an ophthalmic company based in Switzerland.

Traditional cataract intraocular lenses correct only for far fields of vision. When implanted in the eyes of cataract patients, the ReStor lens, approved by the Food and Drug Administration in March, allows its users to see things both near and far without wearing glasses.

"It is a real wow factor for patients who are spectacle-dependent," Jacobson said. "According to a (Food and Drug Administration) study, 80 percent of ReStor patients never use spectacles again after the surgery. For regular cataract surgery, a large majority of patients will still wear spectacles for near vision."

A cataract occurs when the natural lens in the eye becomes clouded over time, causing partial or complete blindness. The natural lens is important because it focuses light passing through the eye onto the retina, which translates the light into nerve signals that are transmitted to the brain, according to the National Eye Institute, a division of the National Institutes of Health.

With an aging baby boomer population, the number of people needing cataract surgery is expected to rise beyond 30 million by 2020, according to the National Eye Institute. More than half of people age 80 and older have had a cataract or cataract surgery, the Eye Institute said.

When implanting the intraocular lens, eye doctors make a tiny, 2.5-millimeter incision on the eye to remove the natural lens and replace it with the new lens, 6 millimeters in diameter, using an injector gun. The overall surgery and recovery process is fairly quick, the doctors said.

"You can have improved vision the next day," Lindahl said. "The patient is stable within three days, and they use an eye drop medication for a few weeks. Each eye is done a few weeks apart."

"If you take a large group of patients who never wore glasses when they were young, need reading glasses at 40, then lose the ability to focus at any distance, those patients are the best candidates," Lindahl said.

People considering laser refractive surgery could also benefit. Laser surgery generally corrects eyes for one particular field of vision, meaning a patient might still have to wear reading glasses even if far vision is corrected.

"It's not for very nearsighted patients or people who are dependent on night vision, such as night drivers," Lindahl said. He said 5 percent of patients with the Alcon lens reported seeing glare or halos at night.

Jacobson said other "multifocal" intraocular lenses include Advanced Medical Optics Inc.'s ReZoom and Eyeonics Inc.'s Crystalens, but he said he thinks Alcon's ReStor "will be the best."

The ReStor lens costs $1,500 per eye. Because the implantation falls under the category of refractive surgery, Medicare reimburses up to $150 of the cost, Lindahl said.

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