Customized ablation treatments produce excellent results

He reported on results from 3 months of follow-up in a prospective, masked, randomized contralateral-eye study at the annual meeting of the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery.

"This is a small study and further investigation may be warranted," said Dr. Slade, director, Laser Center of Houston. "Of interest, however, in a similar investigation we conducted comparing CustomVue treatment with Zyoptix (Bausch & Lomb) treatment, the results favored the Zyoptix group, suggesting there may be some advantage for scanning versus broad-beam lasers."

"With this contralateral eye design, our treatment groups were very well-matched in their preoperative variables, and the surgical variables were also tightly controlled with all procedures performed by a single surgeon using the femtosecond laser microkeratome (IntraLase Corp.). Therefore, we were able to have a statistically powerful study with relatively few patients," Dr. Slade noted.

For the first phase of the study, mean preoperative MRSE was –3.41 D for CustomCornea eyes and –3.34 D for the CustomVue group. However, at 3 months, the uncorrected visual acuity (UCVA), best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA), and accuracy outcomes all favored the CustomCornea treatment as a result of undercorrection of higher levels of myopia with the CustomVue platform.

At 3 months, UCVA was 20/20 or better among 79% of CustomCornea eyes compared with 67% of CustomVue eyes; corresponding rates for UCVA of 20/25 or better were 96% versus 71%. A gain in BCVA was achieved by 32% of CustomCornea eyes compared with 24% of CustomVue eyes, and the only loss in BCVA affected a single eye in the CustomVue group.

Between-group comparisons of higher-order aberrations showed increases in both groups with a statistically significant difference favoring CustomCornea treatment at 1 and 3 months for less induced spherical aberration.