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About Us

IOL Con’s small and active team is composed of internationally-based scientists from many disciplines. IOL Con’s head office is located at Saarland University, Homburg in Germany. IOL Con has been founded under the umbrella of Steinbeis Foundation for Economic Development, which strongly supports the transfer of knowledge and technology.

The first idea to establish a modern web-based data base for IOL specifications and optimized constants, arose in 2015. Up to that time, ULIB was the first database for optimized intraocular lens (IOL) constants, and would not be updated anymore.

Today, IOL Con offers much more than a simple static table. It is a modern global interactive internet platform providing ophthalmic surgeons with continually updated IOL characteristics. IOL Con, a biometry database, is available today and can evolve to meet the developing demands of ophthalmic surgery.

Why IOL Con?

Optical biometry has fundamentally changed cataract surgery. Combined with the introduction of the first optical biometer (Zeiss’ IOLMaster) and Prof. Wolfgang Haigis’ ULIB database of IOL constants, a path was created for a successful new technology. ULIB was the first database of its time. It set a milestone in providing optimized IOL constants for cataract surgery. From today’s perspective, it no longer meets modern requirements.

To meet today’s standards Prof. Achim Langenbucher, from Saarland University (Homburg) further developed Haigis’ ideas of an internet database for IOL constants. In 2017, he established and launched a modern data base for IOL constants: IOL Con. Today, it is an internationally available, modern and updated web-based platform for the characteristics of IOLs and optimized IOL constants. IOL Con’s website shows the specifications of all major IOLs provided by manufacturers and distributors. By applying modern algorithms, IOL Con offers optimized IOL constants based on thousands of clinical results provided by surgeons and manufacturers from all over the world.

IOL Con is independent of IOL manufacturers, specific devices or surgeons. The data in IOL Con is generated by two user groups: IOL manufacturers and ophthalmic surgeons. IOL Con offers easy download- and upload-functions of information on biometry, the implanted IOL (including its post-OP refraction) - which is needed for optimizing constants. As of today, most data has been transferred from in ULIB to IOL Con. To ensure copyright compliance, an agreement between Prof. Haigis and Prof. Langenbucher is in place.

IOL Con is growing steadily: Currently, this platform presents the data of 655 IOLs from 36 manufacturers, which includes over 31 000 clinical results for 159 lenses.

Handling Advice for Ophthalmologists

Lenses Overview

IOL Con provides an up-to-date overview of available IOLs with all relevant technical, geometric and material characteristics. The search options of the database can easily be used in a variety of ways. For example, you can select for manufacturers, IOL material, haptic design, biometer, the ethnic background and many more. Use the buttons in the top left to download or print intraocular lenses and import them in your biometer. If you selected some lenses, there will also be a list of those to download. Otherwise the lenses shown in the table will be downloaded, which could be all or only the ones you have searched for.

By using the constants to download-submenu, the user would be able to filter the clinical results which are used for optimization and receiving personalized constants. The user should check the manual of the biometer for the correct file version (this will only affect the XML download). For current devices with automatic import, like IOLMaster 700 (Zeiss), OA-2000 (Tomey), Anterion (Heidelberg Engineering), Revo (Optopol) and Galilei G5 (Ziemer), version 2.0 and above would be appropriate.

IOL Con’s website provides information about the IOLs included. To facilitate a convenient overview, the visible columns-submenu allows users to select relevant information.

IOL Con uses colour codes frames to describe the quality of the optimized constant. This is based on the number of clinical results used for that specific optimization (traffic light system): a red frame indicates optimisations based on less than 100 clinical results, yellow shows optimizations based on data between 100 and 500 clinical results and green are those constants which have been optimized by using 500 or more clinical results. By hovering the mouse over the respective optimization, a pop-up window shows the mean absolute prediction error (the deviation of our prediction compared to a perfectly fitting lens).

Furthermore, colour coding is used as well to describe the way of showing the toric power of an IOL. The manufacturer, who uploads the data of his respective IOLs, can choose whether to show the “refractive power as sphere and cylinder” or the “refractive power as spherical equivalent and cylinder”. This information can also be found as footnote at the lenses table.

Upload of Clinical Results

Registered surgeons may upload the refractive results of their cataract surgeries. In doing this they receive their optimized/personalized constants. This service is free for ophthalmic surgeons.

The process is easy: To register and upload the results and receive individual personalized constants, use the contact form by clicking on contact at the bottom of the main web page or writing us an e-mail. Note, only verified ophthalmologist can send data to IOLCon in order to calculate optimized, personalized constants. This contributes to optimizing the global constants based on community data.

A registered surgeon can provide IOLCon his surgical results, either by using the export function of the biometer or by filling in the spreadsheet provided below and uploading it to IOLCon. It is not necessary to fill all columns of the template, but the more data about the patient and the results available, the better it will be for individualized constant optimization. The mandatory fields are: IOL manufacturer and name (as shown on our website), as well as biometry and refractive data.

In the user settings please provide information about the biometer, its keratometer index and the measuring distance used for refraction. For best results, postoperative refraction should be done manually after at least three months post-surgically and at a distance of 6 metres/20 feet.

Please follow our spreadsheet to upload clinical results.

Handling Advice for Lens Manufacturers and Distributors

Contact us if your company’s lenses are not listed on IOL Con by sending an e-mail to SU1577@stw.de. Please note: To maintain this platform, to develop new features and keep it free for ophthalmic surgeons, we need to charge an annual fee.

Handling Advice for Biometer Manufacturers

Contact us if you develop a biometer or software for ophthalmic surgeons and want to implement a direct interface to IOL Con. Check our interface documentation below and use the latest version if possible.