Reduce Your Need for Reading Glasses
Advances in cataract surgery have made it possible for many patients to enjoy a greater range of vision with less dependence on glasses. While traditional monofocal lenses typically provide clear vision at only one distance, newer Extended Depth of Focus (EDOF) lenses offer a continuous range of vision from intermediate distances to far away. Compared with earlier multifocal lenses, EDOF lenses can significantly reduce the need for reading glasses—often by 80–85%—while minimizing common side effects such as nighttime glare and halos. For many patients, this premium lens technology provides an excellent balance of visual freedom, comfort, and quality of vision after cataract surgery.
Hi, I’m Dr. Ilan Epstein. I’m one of the cataract surgeons at the Fort Lauderdale Institute, and I wanted to talk to you about cataract surgery and specifically lenses that we offer to our patients with a special focus to what we now offer is Extended Depth of Focus Lens. So, you may or may not already be aware, but with cataract surgery, we replace your natural human lens that’s become cloudy, which is what we call cataract, with an artificial one.
The original and standard model for an artificial lens would be something called monofocal, which like it sounds, means single focus. So, this would be a lens that could correct your vision only to see long range distance or up close but can’t really do both of those things. There’s still a need for a significant amount of glasses to be used after cataract surgery with monofocal lenses.
What I’m excited to tell you about is that lens technology has been growing by leaps and bounds. And so, after a monofocal lens, what was later developed are what are called multifocal lenses, which can correct and have the ability to correct both far and close vision to then limit your need for glasses after cataract surgery. However, the earlier generation multifocal lenses would come with a lot of glare and halo that you might see at nighttime.
So now what we can offer to our patients is a modified generation of a multifocal lens called an Extended Depth of Focus Lens. So, like it sounds, an extended focus lens is going to start your vision at say two to three feet and extending outwards to the distance. So, what that does is it gives you this extended range of vision. You’re not always having to rely on and reach for reading glasses for every little scenario.
Now, these lenses don’t necessarily get rid of reading glasses completely but will reduce them by about 80 to 85% compared to distance-only lens. And so, you do get that increased range of vision and reduced dependency on reading glasses.
And the added benefit of an extended focus lens compared to an early generation multifocal is that the extended focus will not have the same amount of glares and halos, almost to the point where they’re extremely minimal.
And so, a lot of our patients are now opting for this as an option to maximize their vision with the cataract surgery while minimizing any potential side effects from glares and halos.
