December 2009
Consultant ophthalmic surgeon Mr Bobby Qureshi, one of the UK’s leading eye surgeons working at Spire Gatwick Park Hospital, recently carried out the first ever Light Adjustable Lens (LAL) implant surgery in the UK. He is the only UK surgeon to be trained to use Calhoun Vision’s innovative Light Adjustable Lens (LAL) implants. The Light Adjustable Lens is probably the greatest leap forward in lens implant technology since the first implant was used 60 years ago. It is the most technologically advanced implant now available, with the capacity to be altered after surgery to give the best vision possible for each individual eye without the need for glasses.
“This is probably the biggest breakthrough in cataract surgery for decades. I feel so fortunate to be pioneering it in the UK,” says Mr Bobby Qureshi. “We have the potential here to change patients' vision to how it was when they were young. The change is so accurate that we can even make the lens bifocal or varifocal, so as well as giving them good vision at distance we can give them good vision for reading.”
As we age the natural lens inside the eye changes so that we require reading glasses (a change called presbyopia). As it ages further the lens becomes yellow and our vision begins to decline, at which stage this is called a cataract. About 60% of people over the age of 60, and quite a few younger than that, are affected by cataracts. Almost everyone will develop a cataract if they live long enough.
The LAL, developed in the US by a team of Nobel Prize winning scientists, is a groundbreaking new type of lens that can give a patient "HD vision" after it has been inserted into the eye. With other eye implants, such as multifocal implants, over 70% of people are still left with a degree of long sight, short sight or astigmatism after surgery, which means they still need to wear glasses to achieve good vision. With the LAL, the implant is adjusted after surgery by the safe and non-invasive application of ultraviolet light controlled by a sophisticated computer system. The lens adjustment is so precise that it is now possible to give patients 20/20 vision without glasses . For the first time in the history of eye surgery, microscopic imperfections in the eye that can limit vision can now be corrected, leaving the potential to give patients "HD vision".
After studying at medical school in London, Mr Bobby Qureshi trained and worked at London's Moorfields Eye Hospital, one of the world's leading eye centres, and is now Medical Director of the London Eye Hospital, as well as operating at Spire Gatwick Park Hospital. He is one of only a handful of specialists in the UK trained in corneal surgery and refractive surgery and has helped thousands of patients across the UK. As he pioneered multi-focal lens implants and specialises in cataract surgery, there was no surprise that he was the first eye surgeon in the UK to be chosen to receive authorisation and training to use LAL implants.