Alcon’s Suite Approach to Building the Premium Channel

As cataract patients’ expectations rise, demanding visual performance on par with refractive surgery, Alcon is striving to meet those high expectations through its Cataract Refractive Suite, Seba Leoni, vice president and global head, Surgical Suite for Alcon reported during the panel on diagnostics and the premium channel at OIS@ASCRS 2016.

Leoni quoted results that showed 93% of refractive surgery patients were within 0.5 D of targeted refraction postoperatively versus just 62% of routine cataract surgery patients.

“The big issue is the fact that this gap between reality and expectations is ultimately having a negative impact on surgeons’ confidence to recommend advanced technology offerings like premium IOLs,” Leoni said. “It is one of the key barriers that is keeping the premium channel from fully realizing its true benefit.”

Clinicians need what Leoni called “a holistic approach” to minimize the variability associated with cataract surgery.

That’s the concept behind the cataract-refractive suite of Alcon. The full suite combines Verion image guidance, LenSx laser, LuxOR LX3 ophthalmic microscope, Centurion phacoemulsification platform and ORA with VerifEye+ to calculate corneal measurements, including

posterior corneal cylinder that previously was not available, Leoni said.

ORA with VerifEye+ also has access to a database of more than 500,000 procedures, “enabling surgeons to load their postoperative outcomes back into this database and compare them to their plan,” Leoni said.

“While we’re very early in this process, we’re collecting data that is showing we’re beginning to approach the threshold of getting nine out of 10 patients to within ±0.5 D of targeted refraction,” he said.

The integration of the surgical suite is also leading to a higher utilization of premium IOLs, Leoni said, suggesting that surgeons are becoming more confident in recommending and delivering the expected outcomes.

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