My Panoptix experience: both eyes, high myopia and high astigmatism

Hi, thanks for sharing your experience. I am especially interested in it because I have cataract on one eye only, and the other is -9. I was wondering if you tried wearing contact lenses on the unoperated eye after the first surgery. My doctor says that you should be able to see comfortable with both eyes in this case.

Joe,

I am happy to hear of your success with the PanOptix Toric IOL. I just had my first one put in yesterday and I am already seeing 20/20 in that eye! My other eye isn't very bad and I am typing on my computer tonight without any glasses. I can even read fine print (my non-operated eye usually needs reading glasses). Of course, I haven't driven at night yet, but I've always hated the bright headlights, so any halo or radiant effects probably won't bother me much. I looked at a spotlight on the ground from the 2nd floor tonight and saw clear radiant light around it from my PanOptix eye. My other eye has a cataract just starting and the light was more hazy. I understand after about six months some people stop noticing the effects of bright lights when driving. I, too, don't drive a lot at night.

PanOptix are expensive, but it sure beats having to update the lenses in my glasses each year (I have four sets of glasses!) Now I only need my sunglasses... yaaaay!

I had my R eye done two weeks ago, and the L eye one week ago.

I am 49, healthy and love to trail run and mountain bike and like most of us spend a lot of time in front of a computer for work.

The Good:

1. Freedom from glasses. I can drive night or day, I can read, and do computer work without glasses.
2. Distance vision is pretty awesome, as good as before glasses and very near 20/15 in both eyes in bright light conditions. View of the mountains in the distance the first weekend was amazing.
3. Bright light vision is quite good, reading at 20/15 in bright lighting.
4. Wonderful to wake up at night, or in the morning and not have to hunt for glasses.

The Downsides:

1. Still some residual astigmatism in the R eye, minor buy annoying and most noticable from a single LED light in the distance at night. Astigmatism correction (Toric lense) comes in discrete step, and the small residual correction will be done by PRK in a month or so after the eyes are completely healed.

2. For intermediate and near vision (computer screens and reading), white words on black have a glowing blurry halo behind them, and black on white there is a gray glow around all the words. Increasing screen brightness helps. The Opthamologist describes this as a 'loss of contrast'. Makes low light reading hard. Reading glasses do make words crisp, but I find the slight blurring and loss of contrast much less annoying than reading glasses. Turning of the brightness on screens largely solves this

3. Brights lights have multiple concentric rings around them, particularly noticable at night. I observed that is in part due to the size of the pupil opening being larger at night. Larger pupil means more concentric rings, and a smaller pupil is less. The number of rings/size of rings is curiously dependent on the brightness of the light. A very bright light at a distance has many rings making it appear huge. A dim light has very few or no rings. For driving, this throws up a perception of distance, as size of lights are now proportional to brightness rather than distance. The brain is adjusting well and I can drive at night just fine, though I do miss the crispness of night driving that I had before surgery.

All in all, tolerable so far, and I find my brain adjusting quickly to the new optics. Biggest complaint is at night the concentric rings around bright lights.