Refractive Lens Exchange is a type of surgery that takes the lens out of your eye and exchanges it with a synthetic lens to help sharpen your vision. It is typically performed on people with conditions like hyperopia or presbyopia, which develops due to old age. If you happen to have both, RLE is your only option. If an individual only has one of these, there are options like LASIK, PRK, and phakic IOL. Another name for RLE is clear lens extraction, and it is the most sufficient of all these surgeries for these particular eye conditions.

The clear lens extraction procedure is fairly quick. Each eye takes around twenty minutes, each eye done seven days apart. The eye receives drops containing anesthetics to avoid pain, and then the lenses are swiped. It takes about a week for a patient to recover and to be able to resume daily activities. The result of the surgery is clear vision, and the intraocular lens (IOL), which is the synthetic lens used to replace the natural one, is meant to last the rest of your life. Once the surgery is complete, the patient’s vision is typically fixed permanently.

The cost of refractive lens exchange is on average $4000 per eye. Since the results are effective, the surgery is worth it. During the week of recovery, one may experience blurred vision and glare, but these problems go away quickly. For patients with farsightedness and presbyopia, this procedure should be heavily considered because it is the best and most practical surgery for these conditions.