NEW TECHNOLOGY GIVES PATIENTS SHARPER VISION

By Dr. Bret Ulrich Liberty Lake EyeCare Center

While attending a conference a few years ago, I ran across a small company called Opthonix. They use space-age technology to measure unique variations in each person’s eyes, in addition to the standard near-sighted, far-sightedness and astigmatism. They use that information to make a correction over and beyond a regular pair of glasses, resulting in customized eyeglass lenses. I told them if they could pull that off I would definitely invest in the technology for my practice. I knew from my training at that time that we weren’t able to correct all the subtle aberrations of the human eye. Two minutes later they handed me a new prescription full of barcodes and thousands of parts instead of three to six numbers normally used to make a lab order. Anxiously I sent it off with a frame and waited. And waited. And waited. A few months later I finally received my new iZon lenses from Opthonix. The lenses were sharper than my best glasses (and believe me, we had labored over them to make them as sharp as possible). Opthonix claims improvements for night vision and glare, so I parked in the Home Depot parking lot one night to compare my new set of glasses to the old pair. While looking at a distant reader board and traffic signals, I realized that viewing through my iZon pair really made my vision sharper. Even though the quality was excellent, I waited two years to invest in the examination equipment because of the slowness in delivering the glasses. Once the time lag improved, we became the first office in the Inland Northwest to have the technology and have been utilizing it for about a year to evaluate and treat patients. Independent research and our own patients report a 10 to 15 percent improvement in vision, especially in dim, dark or glaring driving conditions. A lot of patients report it is like having high-definition glasses. One patient said her vision was so sharp that it was like putting on glasses for the first time. Certainly this technology is not for everyone. But if you are very discriminating about your night vision or need to drive a lot at night, iZon is the clearest eyeglass lens available.

IZON Link: http://www.izonlens.com/consumer.php