PUBLICATION EXCLUSIVE: Refractive surgeons look to SMILE into the new year

Premium surgeons are embarking upon the new year with new refractive surgery procedures recently approved by the FDA, such as the Raindrop corneal inlay from ReVision Optics. Even more exciting is the FDA approval of the VisuMax small incision lenticule extraction procedure from Carl Zeiss Meditec for reduction or elimination of myopia from –1 D to –8 D, with 0.5 D cylinder or less and manifest refraction spherical equivalent of –8.25 D in the eye to be treated in patients who are 22 years of age or older with documentation of stable manifest refraction over the past year.With more than 51 million LASIK procedures performed worldwide, SMILE brings a new era of sophistication to myopia correction in the U.S. in what we can call microincisional refractive surgery (MIRS), no different from MICS and MIGS in cataract and glaucoma surgery, respectively. SMILE has already been established in global markets such as Europe, China, Australia, Canada and India.