Intraocular Implant Lug Mechanism for Capsule Fixation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current intraocular implant techniques face challenges in accurately centering the lens in the X-Y plane, ensuring correct rotational placement, and minimizing the size of the incision required for implantation, which can affect the optical power and precision of the lens placement.
Innovation Solution
The development of an intraocular implant with a main portion and a peripheral portion featuring lugs that extend perpendicularly, designed to engage with voids in the capsule, allowing for precise alignment and attachment, and a method of manufacturing these implants with asymmetric lug arrangements for correct rotational registration.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If conventional haptic-based lens holding methods are used, then the lens can be secured in the capsule, but accurate centering in the X-Y plane becomes difficult due to pupil-capsule misalignment
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces lugs as intermediary elements that extend from the lens periphery into the capsule wall. These lugs serve as mediators between the lens and capsule, providing direct mechanical engagement points that enable precise X-Y plane centering independent of pupil-capsule alignment. The lugs physically anchor the lens at specific radial positions within the capsule.
2Reliability
If conventional haptic structures are used to center and secure the lens, then the lens can be held in place, but the incision size must be relatively large to accommodate the haptics
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the lens-securing function from traditional haptic structures and implements it through lugs that extend directly from the lens periphery. This extraction allows for a more compact design where the securing mechanism is integrated into the lens body itself, reducing the overall dimensions and enabling smaller incision sizes while maintaining reliable lens securing.
3Ease of manufacture
If symmetric lug arrangements are used, then manufacturing is simplified, but correct rotational registration cannot be ensured
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs asymmetric arrangement of lugs around the lens periphery. This asymmetry provides unique rotational signatures that enable precise rotational registration during implantation. The non-uniform angular spacing or varying lug geometries create orientation-specific engagement patterns with the capsule, ensuring correct rotational placement while maintaining manufacturing feasibility through standardized asymmetric templates.
Data Source
AI summary
An intraocular implant for use in a surgical procedure such as a cataract operation, or in a refractive-lens exchange surgery procedure, has a main portion and a peripheral portion peripheral to the main portion. The main portion is plate-like in shape and may be a lens or a plug for closing an aperture in the capsule of the eye. The implant has two or more lugs extending from the peripheral portion in a direction substantially perpendicular to a plane of the main portion. The lugs extend either from haptics, which protrude from the main portion, or from a short extension of the edge of the main portion. A method for fixing the implant into the eye involves making two or more voids in the capsule wall, offering up the implant to the capsule, so that the lugs lie adjacent to the voids, and inserting the lugs into the voids.