During the last year, advances have been made in intraocular lens implantation, in refractive surgery, and in the development of corneal wound—healing agents. There has also been concern over the effect of efforts to decrease Medicare reimbursements for cataract surgery.
Implantation of an intraocular lens (IOL) continues to be the preferred method of visual rehabilitation after cataract extraction, with an estimated 1 million IOLs being implanted in 1986. Eighty-six percent of these lenses are placed in the posterior chamber (PC) and 14% in the anterior chamber (AC). Only five years earlier, the proportions of PC and AC implantations were nearly equal (40% and 35%, respectively).1 Recently, attention has been focused on evaluating new lens designs. Past and present problems in AC lens design and manufacture,2 such as those with closed-loop AC IOLs,3 have been discovered, and a number of AC lenses have been withdrawn from the market