Last year I wrote a 3-part series on Toric IOLs for beginners which has been published in Ophthalmology Times Europe. Up until the pandemic halted travel, I was running a course at the European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons Meeting annually for the past 5 years titled ‘Toric IOLs: Planning for successes and dealing with failure.

These sessions were aimed at surgeons who are interested in learning this technique. In the absence of these meetings, or until they start up again, these articles are the next best thing and aims to help alleviate these issues! All articles are freely available on line and linked below.

Part 1 – looks at patient selection and optimising biometry. When starting with toric IOLs, just as for any new procedure, it is completely reasonable to cherry-pick the simplest cases with the highest likelihood of success. Selecting the optimal patient and eye will give you confidence to build up to more complex cases. Making sure that your biometry is as accurate as possible also increases the odds of both you and your patient being happy with the outcome.

Part 2 – In this second part of my series focuses on toric IOLs treat astigmatism during cataract surgery. Over 80% of my patients receive a toric version of their preferred IOL option because I want to give them the best possible visual outcome available. Yet worldwide toric uptake is only in the low teens’ percentage wise!

Why is this? I believe a large part of the problems I concern with not knowing how or when to use them properly and fear of dealing with complications on behalf of ophthalmologists.

Part 3 – This final instalment focuses on surgical tips and most importantly, post operative management of any complications. I aimed to make the whole process as simple as I could to encourage more surgeons to use toric versions of their favourite IOLs and give patients their best possible vision.

All of the articles are linked above. Enjoy some bedtime reading!