Intracor Laser Eye Surgery for the treatment of Presbyopia
Intracor is a new minimally invasive intrastomal procedure for the correction of presbyopia using TECHNOLAS Femtosecond laser without corneal surface ablation.
This Laser is used to reshape the cornea by focusing femtosecond laser beam directly to the middle corneal stromal layer without affecting the superficial corneal epithelium layer, Bowman layer, the deep Descemet’s membrane or the corneal endothelial cells.
Reshaping the central part of the cornea changes the refractive power of the cornea and increases the depth of focus. The intracor is used on one eye, usually the non-dominant eye.
Femtosecond laser beam ablate the mid stromal part of the cornea leading to the formation multiple concentric rings, which are ideally 5 rings but it can be customized for 6 with or without eight radial intrastromal incisions.
These rings steepen the curvature of the central zone in the cornea. This central zone can be used for clear near vision. The part of the cornea outside this central zone can maintain clear intermediate and far vision.
Advantages of Intracor Laser Eye Surgery
Less risk of infection because these is no wound.
Risk of Lasik complications is eliminated. Because the superficial corneal epithelial layer is intact and no corneal flap is created.
Corneal thickness remains unchanged.
There is no post-operative pain or discomfort because there is no wound or flap.
The cylinder power of the eye showed minimal difference between pre and post operation. Uncorrected and best-corrected distance visual acuities were stable.
Time of the procedure is rapid, which lasts almost 20 seconds per eye.
Disadvantages Intracor Laser Eye Surgery
All patients reported seeing halos around lights after the procedure, especially at night and some of them reported that they can’t drive at night. These halos of lights diminished with time over a year.
It is mainly designed for presbyopic patients with hyperopia. It is not suitable for presbyopic patients with myopia because this procedure can cause myopic shift of -0.5 D.
Intracror not easy to reverse, so patient selection for this procedure is very important.
For several hours after the procedure, the vision is blurry because of the presence of gas bubbles from ablation of femtosecond laser in the stromal layers of the cornea. Vision clears when the bubbles dissolve after 2 to 3 hours.
