At the ESCRS 2024 MedTalks, Dr. Kepa Balparda shared his personal experience using the Intensity Pentafocal IOL in a session titled “Five is Better than Three.” Building on the proven success of Intensity, Dr. Balparda highlighted how its five focal points deliver truly seamless vision — and why patients and surgeons alike are seeing the difference.
We’re excited to share a newly recorded version of Dr. Balparda’s talk, now available to watch online.
The Intensity IOL’s Five Focal Points
Traditional trifocal IOLs often struggle to balance visual quality across all distances, leaving gaps in intermediate vision and causing issues like halos and glare. Intensity addresses these limitations by introducing two additional focal points, referred to as “intensifiers,” which ensure exceptional clarity from near to far and enhance contrast sensitivity without compromising visual comfort.
Caption: Dr. Kepa Balparda shares his clinical results with the Intensity IOL.
Dr. Balparda’s Intensity Study With 100% Patient Satisfaction
Dr. Balparda’s discussion includes his own clinical data published in his study “Short-Term Visual Outcomes After Bilateral Pentafocal Intraocular Lens Implantation. A Pilot Study”, which evaluated the performance of the Intensity IOL in patients with presbyopia three months post-surgery. The results were impressive:
• Far Vision: 100% of patients achieved 20/25 without using glasses, with over half achieving 20/20 without glasses.
• Intermediate Vision: Recognized as a common challenge in multifocal IOL design, this range saw remarkable results, with 100% of patients achieving 20/40 without glasses and 80% reaching 20/32 without glasses.
• Near Vision: 100% achieved 20/25 without glasses, and 65% reached 20/20 without glasses.
Speaking about the usually challenging intermediate vision, Dr. Balparda says that “patients were very happy with these results. As they were fairly young patients, most of them tend to use computers a lot, so computer vision is extremely important, and intermediate vision just gives that.”
Caption: Dr. Kepa Balparda talks about the Intensity IOL’s flat defocus curve: “Throughout this range, patients are seeing perfectly. [They] are not looking for spots where they can see – they just see clearly.”
When sharing the defocus curve he got with the Intensity IOL, Dr. Balparda explains: “From infinity all the way to around 33-35 cm, it’s a pretty flat line and that’s excellent. Throughout this range, patients are really happy and seeing perfectly. This flat line means patients are not looking for spots where they can see – they just see clearly.”
After emphasizing the safety of the procedure and the predictability of the outcomes, he concludes: “For our study, the satisfaction was 100%. 100% were completely free of glasses for far, near, and intermediate vision, and 100% would undergo surgery again. I’ve used the Intensity IOL for 60 patients so far and I don’t have a single sad patient, or a patient who’s not happy with the results – and this is what we need as refractive surgeons, we need to make them happy.”
About Dr. Kepa Balparda
Combining extensive academic excellence (he holds a Ph.D. in Vision Science) with hands-on expertise (he leads a top ophthalmology practice in Medellín, Colombia, performing up to 1,100 surgeries annually), Dr. Kepa Balparda has been making a name for himself as a visionary in refractive and cataract surgery.
A prolific researcher and educator, he has published over 30 scientific articles and contributed to several books, and he’s a frequent speaker at international conferences. Currently, he is a member of the Colombian Society of Ophthalmology and the European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons (ESCRS).
To learn more about the Intensity IOL through Dr. Balparda’s full MedTalk session, watch the video now!
