Dr. Azam Qureshi from California Pacific Medical Center Awarded $90,000 Knights Templar Eye Foundation Grant for Pseudophakic Accommodation in Children Research

Dr. Azam Qureshi from the California Pacific Medical Center Lion’s Eye Clinic, San Francisco, California was awarded a $90,000 grant entitled: Pseudophakic Accommodation in Children.

When an individual undergoes cataract surgery, the patient’s natural lens (the cataract) is removed and replaced with an intraocular lens implant. The majority of patients, especially adults, appear to lose any remaining accommodative ability of the eye after cataract surgery with implantation of a monofocal lens. However, clinicians have noted that children (and some young adults) retain an unexpected ability to see objects at near after cataract surgery with intraocular lens implantation. There are many hypotheses for this phenomenon, called pseudoaccommodation.

Dr. Qureshi will study this phenomenon in children who have undergone cataract surgery in one eye compared to both eyes, and he expects that the children who have had cataract surgery in just one eye will have better accommodation in the affected eye because they still have one “unaffected” eye with strong accommodation.

Children who have undergone cataract surgery in both eyes do not have a natural lens driving accommodation, and thus they will have less accommodative ability in either eye. This research is important to further understanding of the process of accommodation and inform the work being done to counteract presbyopia and develop accommodative intraocular lenses.