Intraocular Lens Surgery for High Myopia

  He was a highly myopic patient with 2300 degrees in one eye and 2500 degrees in the other, who started to follow up with me in 2002. His sister, who has 2600 degrees of myopia, has been stable during the long years of follow-up and had intraocular lens surgery V4C combined with SMILE last December to get rid of the thick glasses in view of the appropriate indexes such as anterior chamber depth. His 6-year-old twin boys are cute and elfish, but have 900 and 700 degrees of myopia respectively. When he brought the boys to see the doctor these two years, I didn’t seem to see the mother accompanying him, but only saw him alone to wrap up. I didn’t ask him more and don’t know the real situation of his life.  However, I know that he was not yet 20 years old when he came. He was from Hubei. Some of his acquaintances were working in Shanghai, and he defected to come here. He did some temporary work, such as bricklaying. He couldn’t see clearly, really couldn’t see clearly, and was withdrawn from work, so he came to ask for surgery. I had him fitted with RGP and told him that one day I would help him. I also tried to help him find a job that required very little vision in his eyes back then, but it didn’t work out. Until he told me that he found a job in Songjiang as a farmer. Later, when he brought the twins to see me, I learned that he was married and had children. He asked me if the children would be nearsighted, and after I examined them, I told him that both of them were highly myopic and asked him to have them fitted with wearing glasses.  People with high myopia are a very deserving group of people to care for. In reality, myopia is common, myopia anxiety is common, and people with high myopia are under greater pressure, and it is rare that people with ultra-high myopia do not experience discrimination in their social lives. The most serious form of hepatitis B discrimination is employment discrimination, and this similar “discrimination” also happens to people with high myopia, usually in a more subtle way. In rural and other less developed areas, people with ultra-high myopia are even misunderstood by their parents’ narrow perceptions and are relegated to the margins in terms of life planning and personality rights; some rules or customary regulations also affect the life path and career development of people with high myopia (e.g., “people with 4.8 (0.6) lenses corrected to greater than 800 degrees in any one eye cannot be admitted to field, high-altitude, high-temperature, underground, or medical jobs. For example, “any person with a lens correction of 4.8 (0.6) or more than 800 degrees cannot be admitted to the field, high altitude, high temperature, underground work and medical professions (except for mathematics, theoretical physics, engineering, agriculture and medical management)”. We have to work for the welfare of myopic people like we do against hepatitis B discrimination, but the plight of highly myopic people will be difficult to change in the long run.  I always feel some vague self-condemnation when I see him coming for follow-up, and I am full of expectation for such myopia, which still needs to find a more suitable solution. He reminds me of another lucky high myopia patient I treated, the first case of surgery after our V4c passed certification, with 1500 degrees, who reached 1.0 after surgery, resumed normal work and life on the third day of surgery and came for a review not long ago, and, with his newborn baby, he also let me check his eyes, which are currently normal. That surgery day was November 14, 2014 and today is November 14, 2015. A whole year has passed and I am very relieved that he is doing well. In our country, the awareness of V4C is deepening, and V4C surgery is no longer a “simple” implantation of an intraocular lens, but the establishment of a standardized correction system for high myopia, with a strict implantation traceability system by STARR, which also provides a good safety guarantee.  What makes intraocular lens surgery “suddenly come overnight”? The most important thing is the deep intrinsic need of the majority of patients with high myopia, which motivates the colleagues to apply the new technology and products, and to do a good job in clinical practice. On the other hand, there are still many patients who are not aware that intraocular lens surgery can correct their high myopia, and many doctors are not fully aware that high myopia surgery brings patients not only medical treatment, but also improves the deep sociological connotation of high myopia, especially the growth of the personality of high myopia youth and the space for survival and development in society. Both myopic patients and fellow doctors need to further understand this intraocular lens technology objectively, which also requires us to do a good job of scientific communication so that more people can be helped. But are we doing a good job?  More than 600,000 people worldwide have had their myopia and astigmatism corrected by intraocular lenses, whether it is 1200 degrees, 1900 degrees, or thin corneas for moderate to high myopia, with evidence-based evidence of safe and effective results. Intraocular lens surgery is a minimally invasive procedure that requires no more than 3 mm of incision without sutures. When the cornea is not large enough to withstand laser surgery, patients with high myopia who have an appropriate depth of the anterior chamber in the intraocular space and no abnormalities in the corneal endothelium, and who do not have high intraocular pressure factors, are in principle suitable for “add-on” intraocular lens surgery. Of course, it is very important to regulate the indications for intraocular lens surgery, which must be performed after a rigorous evaluation by a specialist. A good thing should be done to achieve the ultimate perfection. One hand, after all, is only one hand, and when you bring a peer, you have another pair of hands to help brighten the day. However, no matter how hard you try, there are still some people with high myopia who cannot enjoy the freedom of clear vision, at least there are more than 40 to 50 million people with high myopia in China waiting for more fellow sufferers to be corrected.  The first of these is the ICL, which is a new generation of ICL, V4C, with the important improvement of having a 360 micron diameter central micropore, abandoning the iris laser perforation, and the atrial aqueous approximation of natural flow, more in line with physiological The V4C is a new generation of ICL, with an important improvement of having a 360-micron diameter central micropore, eliminating the need for iris laser perforation and allowing for a more physiologic flow of atrial fluid. Our observation of consecutive cases, including the first V4C, showed a high level of patient satisfaction. In addition, ToricV4c with astigmatism (the first astigmatic V4C in China was also performed by Prof. Ying) provides an effective correction option for patients with high myopia combined with astigmatism. In practice, a group of experts such as Prof. Lei Zhou, Prof. Ying Shen, Prof. Deng Yan, and Prof. Wen, who are superb in quantity and quality, have reported safe and stable results, and have delivered academic lectures at the European Annual Conference on Cataract and Refractive Surgery.  The rapid progress of V4c in our country is amazing, more and more ophthalmologists are mastering and applying this new technology, and more and more people with high myopia are benefiting from it. in 2015, colleagues across the country paid special attention to the safety strategy and prevention details of intraocular lens technology, discussing it almost every week and selflessly sharing their experiences and lessons learned. I am sure that this love and responsibility for myopic patients will illuminate the reality in the vast space of time. It is true that we have not yet managed to prevent high myopia by “treating the disease before it happens”, but what we can do now is to make every doctor improve and make every ICLV4c better, so that myopic patients can see the world more clearly and live a better life with the help of new technology!