FLEx procedure satisfied 97% of patients in study

Femtosecond lenticule extraction (FLEx) appears to be a safe and promising corneal refractive procedure for correcting myopia, according to a study in the February issue of Graefe’s Archive for Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology.
Marcus Blum, M.D., Helios Hospital, Erfurt, Germany, and his colleagues performed a prospective study in which 107 of 108 myopic eyes of 56 patients were treated by cutting a flap and a lenticule of intrastromal corneal tissue simultaneously with a femtosecond laser. Thereafter, the lenticule was removed manually and the flap repositioned.
The patients’ mean age was 35 years; the pre-op mean spherical equivalent (SE) was −4.59 ± 1.3 D. Six months postoperatively, the mean SE was −0.19 ± 0.47 D; 98.1% of treated eyes were within ±1.0 D, and 74.8% of eyes within ±0.5 D of the intended correction.
Eight (7.4%) of 108 eyes lost one line of Snellen visual acuity, one (0.9%) eye lost two Snellen lines, 46 eyes (43%) gained one line, ten eyes (9.3%) gained two Snellen lines, and the visual acuity remained unchanged in 42 (39.3%) eyes.
The patient responses to a standardized questionnaire indicated that 97.1% of patients were satisfied with the obtained results and would undergo the procedure again, Dr. Blum concluded.

Source: http://www.springerlink.com/content/rk21k741j1721035/
?p=4a1f2540ed224ada8a9ed88269cdbb4f&pi=3 Reported by: EyeWorld News Services