Bifocal intraocular lens
Ultra-thin bifocal intraocular lens (IOL)
Background
Cataracts are the most common eye disease worldwide, occurring in almost 100% of all Central Europeans between the ages of 60 and 75. It is caused by the gradual ageing of the natural intraocular lens. With increasing age, crystalline structures form and the initially highly flexible and transparent lens becomes rigid and cloudy. This leads to two problems. Firstly, patients lose their ability to accommodate, i.e. the ability to deform the lens with muscle power so that they can see sharply both close up (e.g. reading) and far away (e.g. driving). The remedy for this is usually reading glasses or varifocals. On the other hand, the lens becomes increasingly cloudy with advancing age, which sooner or later means that less and less light reaches the retina and the image becomes blurred and the patient almost goes blind.
The way out: implantation
In the case of advanced clouding of the natural lens, the only way out is to implant an artificial intraocular lens (IOL). With over 500,000 operations in 2001 alone, this is the most common and also one of the oldest operations in ophthalmology.
The operation is now often minimally invasive and performed on an outpatient basis. With an operation time of approx. 20 minutes per eye and local anesthesia, the procedure is hardly any more stressful for the patient compared to earlier surgical techniques.
Innovative design: ultra-flat and bifocal
However, one problem that remained even after implantation was the implant's inability to accommodate. Until now, this meant that the patient still needed reading glasses. In addition, new implantation techniques are increasingly being used to reduce the strain on the patient and accelerate wound healing. However, this requires extremely flexible and ultra-thin intraocular lenses.
Both problems were taken into account in the design developed at the Institute. The result is an intraocular lens that is extremely thin and bifocal at the same time thanks to diffractive microtechnical structures.
On the one hand, this means that patient-friendly surgical techniques can be used. With this extremely thin lens, the operation can be performed through an incision of only 2 mm in length. For insertion through this incision, the IOL is specially folded and "injected" through a tube. Once inside the eye, it unfolds to its full size.
Almost more important for the patient, however, is the fact that after successful implantation they can do without reading glasses altogether. The lenses developed at the Institute are designed in such a way that they provide a sharp image both near and far without any significant impairment of visual acuity.
In close cooperation with our industrial partners, the bifocal intraocular line has now been brought to market maturity. Extensive studies have demonstrated the outstanding optical properties of the lenses. Following the product launch phase, the bifocal intraocular lens is now being successfully marketed worldwide by our industrial partners.
Innovation Award of the State of Brandenburg
In December 2001, this product was awarded the Innovation Prize of the State of Brandenburg/Berlin in recognition of the highly innovative development on which it is based.
The picture of the award ceremony (right) shows Prof. Jacobi (University Hospital Gießen), Prof. Kamman (St. Johannes-Hospital Dortmund) as well as Dr. Kreiner (AcriTec GmbH) and Dr.rer.nat. Stork (ITIV) and the Senator for Economics of Berlin, Ms. Juliane von Friesen.