ASCRS 2025: Seth Pantanelli, MD, speaks about compromise and decision-making in IOLs

At the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery (ASCRS) annual meeting, Seth Pantanelli, MD, shared findings from a comparative study on IOL performance in low-light conditions. Dr. Pantanelli is a professor of ophthalmology at Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania. In his ASCRS presentation, he shared findings from a trial of the TECNIS Eyhance IOL (J&J Vision) and the enVista IOL (Bausch + Lomb).

To hear complete results from the study, watch the full video.

Dr. Pantanelli shared some background on the study, including the central question that investigators sought to answer. "This is a study that we've been doing for close to 2 years, and the rationale for the study is that both are monofocal IOLs. There's been some marketing behind the Eyhance which says that it gives you about a line better of intermediate vision. But we found some interesting results in previously-published literature that actually said, in some conditions, the enVista IOL can actually give you a line better than the Eyhance at intermediate, in dark light conditions. So that piqued my interest," he explained. “We thought, well, maybe we should test the visual performance of these two lenses in both bright and dark conditions and see how they perform relative to each other. And we wanted to do that in a really rigorous way."

Dr. Pantanelli explained that the study is a multicentre, randomized control trial, which is almost completely enrolled. "We have about over 70 patients enrolled, and 54 of them have completed their final follow up," he said.

Initially, Dr. Pantanelli and colleagues found that many of the patients who received the Eyhance IOL did see about a half a line better at intermediate compared to patients with the enVista, in bright-light conditions. "The surprise…and why we did the study, was that in dark light conditions, the enVista saw about a half a line better than the Eyhance…and that was especially evident at near [vision]," he said.

"I think the takeaway message is that everything is a balance. If you're going to get something in one way from a lens, you're probably going to have to give up something in another way," Dr. Pantanelli explained. "Right out of the gate, there's a lot of fanfare about about new lenses, but you always have to take a step back and say, 'Okay, there's no free lunch in optics.' There must be a compromise somewhere else. And I think the study shows that."