Phaco Chop: Pearls and Pitfalls

Since Kunihiro Nagahara’s original presentation at the 1993 ASCRS meeting, several different variations of chopping have evolved. Conceptually these can be divided into two main categories. I call the classic Nagahara technique horizontal chopping, because the instrument tips move toward each other in the horizontal plane during the chop. In vertical chopping, the two instrument tips move towards each other in the vertical plane in order to create the fracture. Although David Dillman later popularized the name “Phaco Quick Chop”, Hideharu Fukasaku’s “Phaco Snap and Split” was the first incarnation of this concept.