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Close up on an older person's eye Close up on an older person's eye

ORA SYSTEM® Reaches 2 Million Cases

3 mins read


We’ve proudly launched our home-grown AcrySof® IQ Vivity™, Alcon’s latest innovation in the cataract space in the U.S.

Cataract removal is one of the most common medical procedures performed today, with an estimated 1.7 million Americans receiving the surgery in 2019.1 It’s also one of the oldest. Historical texts date surgical interventions for cataracts back to 600 BC in India to a primitive method of extra-capsular cataract extraction (ECCE).2 Certainly, cataract removal has evolved over the centuries. Year after year, we continue to design ways to make it even more efficient and accurate.

At Alcon, we are always looking for ways to deliver the best outcomes for our patients. That’s why we are proud to have recently reached a significant milestone in the treatment of cataracts: Our Optiwave Refractive Analysis (ORA) SYSTEM®, which helps surgeons in the operating room determine optimal intraocular lens (IOL) power selection and placement for cataract patients, completed two million cases worldwide.3

What’s significant about this milestone for both surgeons and patients? It represents a leap forward in delivering more consistent accuracy than preoperative calculation methods alone.4,5 Unlike traditional methods of calculating IOL power, ORA SYSTEM captures a total ocular refraction measurement that accounts for total ocular astigmatism during surgery. Ultimately, it allows surgeons to identify outliers mid-procedure and hit refractive targets with greater confidence.

With each new procedure, the ORA SYSTEM captures and catalogs the data in its unmatched AnalyzOR™ database, putting more information at the surgeon’s fingertips and allowing them to optimize cataract procedures in real-time.

The ORA SYSTEM is the first and only database for real-time IOL calculations and in-procedure adjustments during surgery. As Alcon re-optimizes the repository quarterly with additional real-world cases, surgical results will only become more accurate.

“The combination of preoperative measurements and ORA is a powerful tool for optimizing patient outcomes,” said Dr. Stephen Lane, Alcon’s Chief Medical Officer. “Now, with more than two million real-world cases of outcome data packed into the ORA AnalyzOR database, the ORA SYSTEM can reduce the rate of off-target cataract refractive procedures. This includes data from procedures leveraging the latest advanced IOL technologies like AcrySof IQ Vivity and PanOptix.”

Cases of cataracts, which are a common result of age-related strain on the eye, are only expected to increase worldwide as the global population ages. In 2019, there were 703 million people aged 65 years or over in the world. The number of people in this age bracket is projected to double to 1.5 billion in 2050.6 The good news: the rate at which physicians and ophthalmologists are able to treat cataracts has also accelerated greatly and bold technologies like the ORA SYSTEM are reinventing the surgical category.

Alcon continues to lead the way with technology and data that helps drive better refractive accuracy and helps patients to see brilliantly.

See the product manual for important product information.

 

References

  1. Vision Council. VisionWatch report shows cataract surgery rates to increase yearly.
  2. American Academy of Ophthalmology. History of Cataract Surgery - EyeWiki (aao.org)
    ORA User Manual.
  3. Cionni RJ, Dimalanta R, Breen M, Hamilton C. A large retrospective database analysis comparing outcomes of intraoperative aberrometry with conventional preoperative planning. J Cataract Refract Surg. 2018. Oct;44(10):1230-1235. doi: 10.1016/j.jcrs.2018.07.016. Epub 2018 Aug 10. PMID:30104081.
  4. Data on file.
  5. United Nations. World Population Ageing 2019: Highlights (un.org)