Implantable Contact Lens (ICL) Surgery Honolulu Hawaii

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BERNADETTE BARAQUIO: You know some people are told that they’re not candidates for laser eye surgery and they continue to live with poor eyesight but now there’s a new technology that can bring new hope. It’s true many have been told they don’t qualify for LASIK surgery while hundreds of thousands of Americans are dependent on glasses or contact lenses. If this sounds familiar, you might want to consider some alternative type of refractive surgery.

DENISE SUGIHARA: Unless you have bad vision, one doesn’t understand how important your vision is. But it’s like a miracle when you open your eyes and you can see without contacts or glasses, you’re like “Wow, yes”. It’s all I can say.

BERNADETTE GALIOS: I’ve been a contact wearer and a glasses wearer for like twenty five years now and now that the children are out of the house it’s like “Oh, you know what? Maybe it’s our time to do a little bit of improvement here and there”.

BERNADETTE BARAQUIO: Dr. Alan Faulkner is one of the leading laser eye surgeons in Hawaii and the only certified physician in the state to perform the Visian ICL.

DR. ALAN FAULKNER: Visian is an implantable lens. It kind of looks like a contact lens but it’s made to put inside the eye and it’s implanted behind the iris, the colored part of the eye, and it rests on the natural lens of the eye. So it doesn’t replace anything, it just basically adds a lens inside the eye.

BERNADETTE BARAQUIO: And because the lens is made of a substance naturally found in your body, the eye doesn’t recognize it as a foreign object so side effects are significantly reduced. With more than 60,000 successful implants made worldwide and a recent FDA approval, the Visian ICL procedure is fast becoming a viable alternative to LASIK.

DR. ALAN FAULKNER: For many patients, the Visian’s actually a better and a safer alternative because of some of the potential complications of LASIK itself.

DENISE SUGIHARA: I got Visian implants because I wasn’t a candidate for LASIK.

DR. ALAN FAULKNER: A lot of the patients for Visian would absolutely be unsafe patients for LASIK because their corneas would end up too thin for what we know the eye can tolerate.

BERNADETTE GALIOS: I didn’t know there was anything beyond, you know, LASIK. I didn’t know there was that, you hear about implantable lens but you heard they were only offered to like cataract patients but I wasn’t sure if they were extended to other patients with other levels of eye weakness.

BERNADETTE BARAQUIO: Now with modern technology, good vision can be a reality for many patients who have lost hope, even those with myopia or severe near sightedness.

DENISE SUGIHARA: I was legally blind. To see something, it literally had to be touching my nose for me to see it. That’s how bad my vision was.

DR. ALAN FAULKNER: She went on after a very short recovery period to actually see 20/10 which means that she can see at twenty feet what a normal person sees at ten feet. So it’s double normal vision.

DENISE SUGIHARA: I can wake up and see the clock. I can wake up and see everything. I can go swimming and open my eyes under the water. I can see and do everything and anything.

BERNADETTE BARAQUIO: For those who wish to keep their options open for the future, the Visian ICL is a completely reversible process and the affects are immediate, literally moments after surgery.

BERNADETTE GALIOS: You know walking out of there that afternoon I was like “Wow”. I mean I was just in awe because when you haven’t been able to see at a distance for a while and you can finally see, it’s like “Wow, was I missing everything? I mean did I not see that?” I should sit there and go, “Wow”.

BERNADETTE BARAQUIO: For Dr. Faulkner and his staff, giving people the gift of eyesight is simply their way of giving back to the people of our Hawaii.

DR. ALAN FAULKNER: I guess the thing that motivates me the most is being able to come in here and see how lives are changed and how happy people are, seeing the smile on people’s faces when they come in the day after surgery and can see.

BERNADETTE BARAQUIO: So if you suffer from poor eyesight and really want to enjoy a better quality of life, check out Aloha Laser Vision and see what options are best for you.

BERNADETTE GALIOS: It’s a lifetime change. There will never be a, you’ll never regret it.