22/03/2026
RLE is fast becoming a very popular form of treatment. So what actually is it? What’s the procedure? 🤔
1. RLE is a surgical procedure for the correction of short sight (myopia) and long sight (hyperopia) to reduce your dependence on glasses or contact lenses.
2. Refractive Lens Exchange is an alternative to laser vision correction (LVC) in patients unsuitable for laser refractive surgery. The common reason is that the refractive error (spectacle prescription) is too large to be safely or effectively corrected by LVC.
3. RLE involves a surgical procedure on the eye that is very similar to modern cataract surgery. It therefore uses tried and tested techniques and technologies. In essence, RLE involves removing the natural clear crystalline lens from the eye and replacing it with a plastic PREMIUM artificial lens (intraocular lens- IOL), the focusing power of which is chosen to reduce dependence on glasses.
4. A cataract occurs when the natural lens of the eye becomes cloudy and obscures vision. The treatment of a cataract is to remove the cloudy lens and replace it with a PREMIUM Lens Implant to restore vision. With RLE, the same thing is done. The only difference is that the natural lens of the eye is clear, and the objective of the procedure is to reduce dependence on glasses and contact lenses. This is why the procedure is sometimes called Clear Lens Extraction.
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