Refractive Lens Exchange

A Lasting Alternative to Glasses and Contacts

As much as you might not want to admit it, the vision and health of your eyes will change as you get older. While changes in your vision may be manageable with contact lenses and glasses, you may want to ditch these eye accessories for the convenience of a more permanent solution.

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Woman squinting to read a book through her glasses

The most common procedure that comes to mind for many is LASIK, but depending on a variety of health factors, you may or may not be a suitable candidate for it. For those who are not a good fit for LASIK, there are a variety of procedures that may be a better fit. Refractive Lens Exchange, or RLE, may be an alternative for those who don’t qualify for LASIK.

What to Expect

The Procedure

The refractive lens exchange procedure is essentially cataract surgery, one of the most successful procedures performed in medicine today. It is fast, straightforward, painless, and very effective. The entire process takes between 15 and 20 minutes and is performed on an outpatient basis. To perform RLE, your surgeon will apply numbing eye drops that minimize any discomfort. Each eye is treated separately, one or two weeks apart.

How Does It Work?

Like cataract surgery, the goal of refractive lens exchange is to replace the natural lens of your eye with an artificial intraocular lens (IOL). These lenses come in two categories:

Monofocal IOLs improve your vision in the distance without glasses.
Multifocal IOLs improve your vision at distance, intermediate and near without glasses.

Your surgeon will help you decide which lens best matches your lifestyle and visual goals.

Is RLE Right for You?

What Makes a Good Candidate

The key factors for a good RLE candidate are age and the related health of the existing lens. Patients in their mid-50s and beyond are often better candidates for RLE than LASIK, as their natural lens has become stiff and lacks the ability to autofocus at high levels. When this is the case, it makes much more sense to fully replace the lens.

RLE is an effective, long-term solution for vision correction, and is often ideal for those who are not viable candidates for LASIK. Millions of these procedures are done in the United States each year, making it a trusted and common operation with many qualified surgeons across the country. While it is more expensive than LASIK, RLE provides a similar outcome and can provide the same quality-of-life benefits.

Not sure whether LASIK or RLE is the better fit? A consultation will give you a clear answer based on the health of your eyes.

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