Dr RP Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences, affiliated to All India Institute of Medical Sciences, AIIMS, New Delhi, is the apex referral institute for all eye diseases and issues of vision correction. AIIMS has finally acquired the Contoura Vision laser technology for vision correction, within one year of its approval for international markets. Contoura Vision laser surgery for vision correction is available now at the institute.
What is Contoura Vision laser surgery?
Contoura Vision laser surgery for vision correction is the latest technology to arrive in India. This surgical technique is actually a topography-guided LASIK treatment system, performed using the WaveLight Allegretto Wave Eye-Q or WaveLight EX500 Excimer Laser Systems, in conjunction with the WaveLight Topolyzer Vario Diagnostic Device (manufactured by Alcon, a division of Novartis, USA). It uses the specific corneal curvature of the individual patient to provide a customized laser ablation of the cornea, providing better vision than that which can be obtained by glasses or contact lenses. This is because the technology ensures that all the surface imperfections in individual corneas are recorded and treated, which results in a sharper and brighter focus.
It is really good news for patients seeking better vision without the use of glasses, because Contoura Vision technology has been proven to be both safe and effective for vision correction. In fact, Contoura Vision provides better visual results than either glasses or contact lenses, as well as other refractive surgery procedures including SMILE and LASIK. In US FDA trials, almost thirty per cent of the eyes which had undergone the surgery, Contoura Vision laser correction reported a better unaided vision than that achieved with the glasses/ contact lenses preoperatively, at the end of twelve months after surgery. Also most of the patients enrolled in the trial also reported significantly fewer visual disturbances like glare, halos, ghost images, difficulty in night time driving and reading etcetera More importantly, the "quality of vision", which is an index of patient delight, includes both visual acuity combined with visual symptoms, has been shown to be far superior with Contoura vision.
In addition to this, Contoura Vision treatment for vision correction has even provided patients vision better than 6/6 (or 20/20, which is the standardized normal vision) in many patients who were evaluated as part of the US FDA trials for validation of the technology. This phenomenon of “supervision” has only been reported with Contoura Vision technology in such large numbers. That is, over forty per cent of the patients evaluated could actually read one extra line on the visual acuity chart while 13.5% could read an extra of two lines on the visual acuity chart. This has been impossible to achieve so far with the other technologies.
How does it compare to existing technology for refractive errors?
As of now, the technology has proven to be most superior of all available modalities of spectacle removal. It has been extremely effective in treating myopia as well as astigmatism, much more than SMILE or femtosecond LASIK. There is no doubt that other vision correction procedures such as the Bladeless Lasik & Smile offer terrific visual results. Despite the fact that the latter two also provide excellent visual results, Contoura Vision has proven to be far superior to both.
The Journal of Refractive Surgery is one of the most respected peer reviewed journals in the world. In a definitive comparison published in the journal by Kanellopoulos et al, the authors reported their results comparing SMILE and Contoura vision LASIK.
They reported that the results of Contoura Vision LASIK at 3 months were far superior to that of SMILE, with 86.4% of the LASIK group and 68.2% of the SMILE group obtaining a vision of 20/20. They reported 20/16, or super vision in 59.1% and 31.8%, respectively.
Evaluating the visual results for astigmatism, they found that residual refraction cylinder (≤ 0.25 D) was 81.8% for the Contoura Vision group and 50% for the SMILE group clearly showing that Contoura Vision laser surgery is the option of choice for astigmatism.
In fact, the authors are of the view that Topography-guided or Contoura Vision LASIK is significantly better in all of the vision indices studies, including visual aberrations and side effects.
Where is Contoura Vision technology available?
Given these conclusive results, it stands to reason that the apex referral institute for eye care should acquire the Contoura Vision technology, so that patients do not have to travel overseas to benefit from this technological advancement. As a matter of fact, there are two hospitals in Delhi that offer this technology to their patients. Apart from AIIMS, the Contoura Vision technology is available at Eye 7 hospitals in Lajpat Nagar, New Delhi.