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Symfony Toric IOL ZXT and halos

Posted , 9 users are following.

james70491
james70491

I'm mid 40s about to have a cataract removed and Symfony Toric extended depth of focus (EDOF) inter ocular lens (IOL), the ZXT series I believe. I have mild astigmatism and a mild prescription for long sightedness. Surgery will be done privately in Reading, Berks UK.

This lens sounds like it will improve my astigmatism and give me good mid and distance, but I may need reading glasses. My only worry is the halos and starbursts. At the moment my cataract explode headlights into a scattergun of light larger than the size of the car, and that makes driving near impossible at night. I assume these halos and starbursts are not that bad?

Has anyone had this lens inserted for a few months/years, and how bad are these visual artefacts at night? Can anyone draw what they see or maybe link to a visual representation online?

Eventually the other eye will need doing, but the cataract in that one isn't too bad yet.

Thanks

James

0 likes, 24 replies

24 Replies

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  • soks
    soks james70491

    Posted

    hi john, i have the symfony non-toric. ZXR lens. what i see is the images you get when you google 'headlight starbursts after lasik, but that starburst is for headlights only. the stoplights do not create starburst. i am 44. the more bothersome for me is the lens edge i see because my pupil dilates beyond iol.

  • james70491
    james70491

    Posted

    I really need to hear from people who have had the ZXT lens

  • marc14910
    marc14910 james70491

    Posted

    Had my 5 week post op dilated exam today on my left eye. As I posted yesterday, halos and concentric circles are a problem at night... daytime vision is OK, not great but acceptable.

    My left eye has astigmatism. I do not know why this didn't show up in the initial exam although it did show a small amount then. It is worse than then since the Symfony was implanted 5 weeks ago. This is the cause of not having great vision in the daytime. There is very minimal PCO, which is not the problem. That is good since if I had a Yag procedure I would not be able to exchange the implant.

    I can have the Symphony removed and replaced with a different implant... the surgeon said I can wait up to 3-4 months post surgery to decide. So I have another exam in 6 weeks. He said he has implanted over 400 Symfonys with few unhappy patients, maybe 5 or 10. In the meanwhile I was given prescription eye drops to use before driving at night, Brimonidine, which are supposed to restrict my eyes from dilating too much at night. It should help with the halos.

    If after my exam in 6 weeks I am still unhappy, I will just get a mono focal implant. Just a note: when I got lasik in 2002, it took 4 weeks for the eyes to heal. For that time I was over corrected about 1 diopter.... very uncomfortable. But one morning one eye was 20/20. The next morning the other eye was. I guess I have abnormal eyes as far as healing. If my halos end up not a problem and I keep the Symfony, I might get PRK to improve the astigmatism.

  • seeherenow49806
    seeherenow49806 james70491

    Posted

    Hi James:)

    Yes, I have the Symfony Toric ZXT in my non-dominant RE (set for not quite perfect distance vision) and a monofocal in my dominant LE set for best distance. This gives me the best of both worlds. Now, 14 and 18 months after surgeries (4 months apart), I barely notice rings/spiderwebs in Symfony eye.

    If you click on my name, you can see other more detailed posts of mine on this subject. Wishing you the best!

    • marc14910
      marc14910 seeherenow49806

      Posted

      Good to know that option can work well. My Symfony eye, LE, might improve more as time goes by, but if it doesn't I might go with a monofocal in my RE. Fortunately my RE doesn't need cataract surgery yet, and shouldn't for a year or more.

      My surgeon told me on my 5 week post op that the LE has astigmatism now. He highly recommended getting PRK to correct that. He thought that PRK should help with the halos/artifacts.

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