Questions and answers

Questions and Answers

Moderator: How much will wavefront technology cost and who is going to buy it?

Karl G. Stonecipher, MD: I think in terms of what it is going to cost is you are probably going to have to buy another topography. Now many of the people are putting that together. There are topographies in with their wavefront-guided analyzers. But I think that, importantly, it’s going to be another piece of equipment that many of us are going to have to buy separately. Again, most of the wavefront analyzers are probably running to between fifty and seventy or eighty thousand dollars. I think that, yes, it’s going be another thing that you have to buy. I think that where it’s going to help you most is when you are sitting down with a patient with a less than satisfactory result, and you’re able to say, “Look, this is why you don’t see well. Here’s your point spread function”, or, “Here are your leftover aberrations.” I think that’s going to be the best bet.

Steven Schallhorn, MD: I’d like to add something to the question about how much it’s goingtocost.Obviouslyyou’regoingtohavetobuyawavefrontunitandalsowhatever laser upgrade or new laser, and what it costs is going to be involved. And who is going to buy it? Well, I think if it results in a better clinical outcome, which it might, if it reduces symptoms, the incidence of night symptoms, or whatever, if either of those things occurs, then within a short amount of time, it’s going to be the standard of care, I think, for wavefront-guided.

RonaldR.Krueger,MD,MSE:OneofthecommentsIthoughtwasrelevantisthatindustry is going to want to make some money out of this after investing a lot into making it all happen, and there are several ways you can make money. You can make money selling the devices, you can make money enabling each procedure you do, or something along those lines. My hope is that probably you’re going to need to charge something more for each custom treatment, but keep the wavefront devices cheap, because we want to be able to get those out like topography units, in OD practices, in satellite clinics, and everything else, so we can get very familiar with using this equipment, and that will helpusdiagnostically,andgiveusmorepowerandstrengthtomaketherightdiagnosis and assess our results.

RaymondA.Applegate,OD,PhD:Anotherthing,too,isthatifwecandevelopandfinalize standardization for all the things we were talking about, and get the wavefront units out, then we’re all talking the same language, and that will help immensely.

Dr Stonecipher: That will help incredibly. If we can come up with standards, before we really launch this in a big way, and people can then follow the standards.

Wavefront and Emerging Refractive Technologies, p. 143

Proceedings of the 51st Annual Symposium of the New Orleans Academy of Ophthalmology, New Orleans, LA, USA, February 22-24, 2002

edited by Jill B. Koury

© 2003 Kugler Publications, The Hague, The Netherlands