Freedom from eye glasses for cataract patients?

This looks like good news for transplant recipients that develop cataracts.

After being on high doses of Prednisone before and after my lung transplant, I developed cataracts and was starting to go slowly blind. Thanks to the miracle of an intraocular lens implant in both eyes I now have perfect 20/20 vision as far as distance goes, but need glasses for reading. Now, there is news that a lens has been developed that provides correction for both near and far sightedness.

Emory Eye Center is the first to offer a newly FDA-approved intraocular lens (IOL) for cataract patients. The lens provides them with a new option for post-surgery vision correction -- that of freedom from glasses. The lens provides near, intermediate, and far vision capabilities.

Alcon Corporation's new AcrySof ReSTOR Apodized Diffractive IOL provides those with or without presbyopia a quality range of vision. Presbyopia ('old age vision') is a refractive condition with a diminished power of accommodation due to a loss of elasticity of the crystalline lens. Typically, those over 40 have this condition.

The new lens allows those patients freedom from glasses following their IOL implant(s). Older IOLs, typically implanted after cataract removal, normally require patients to use reading glasses or bifocals for near vision. In clinical trials with patients who have bilateral cataract removal, 80 percent of them used no glasses following their surgery.

The ReSTOR lens is a foldable IOL that replaces the diseased cataract lens. The complementary technologies of apodization, diffraction and refraction allow patients to experience a full-range of vision without the need for glasses.
'This device is an exciting opportunity for patients and physicians,' says J. Bradley Randleman, MD, a cornea specialist at Emory Eye Center. 'We now have a lens option that may provide high-quality distance and near vision for our cataract patients, and significantly reduce their dependence on glasses for their everyday lives,' he says. "

Full press release: Intraocular Lens