Excimer Laser Correction of Presbyopia: The Final Frontier

The correction of presbyopia with excimer laser surgery on the cornea is the ultimate goal for this type of surgery, since all other treatments for refractive defects have been successfully developed and implemented. Surgery with excimer laser is safe and extremely effective with today’s standards; therefore, most manufacturer companies are working and devoting great research funds and efforts in the development of a technique to treat this aging defect located inside the eye, in the ciliary muscle, and the lens not in the cornea. Several attempts for correcting presbyopia in the cornea with laser surgery have been made. Most of them have not been successful and in fact can be blamed for the bad reputation of surgery on the cornea for the correction of this refractive problem. However, being excimer laser surgery a widely accepted surgery due to its simplicity and safety, this type of surgery has a definitive role in the future treatment of presbyopia. The treatment of presbyopia with excimer laser until a few years ago was based in a technique called monovision. This technique corrects the dominant eye for distant vision and leaves the nondominant eye for near vision with some degree of myopia. Today, however, most laser manufacturers are studying and developing laser ablations to produce multifocality in the cornea. That is the subject of this article.