A soft, flexible lens made of collamer, a material designed to be compatible with the eye. It's placed inside the eye to correct nearsightedness and astigmatism, and it can stay in place permanently.
EVO ICL Surgery in San Francisco
EVO ICL is an implantable lens that corrects your vision from inside the eye, without changing your cornea. It's the procedure we recommend most often for high prescriptions, thin corneas, and dry eyes. Dr. Ling performed the first EVO ICL procedure in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2022 and has performed more than 1,800 EVO ICL procedures throughout his career.
What is EVO ICL?
The easiest way to understand EVO ICL is as an implantable contact lens. Instead of putting contacts in and taking them out every day, a single lens is placed inside the eye, behind the iris and in front of your natural lens, where it corrects your prescription around the clock.
ICL stands for implantable collamer lens. Collamer is a soft, biocompatible material designed to sit inside the eye permanently. The lens is customized to your prescription, and it's additive: nothing is removed and the cornea and the rest of the eye are left largely unaltered. If your needs ever change, the lens can be exchanged, upgraded, or removed.
Who EVO ICL is right for
The most common reasons Dr. Ling recommends EVO ICL are high nearsightedness and thin corneas, the two situations where laser vision correction may not be the best fit.
There are other good reasons to choose it:
- You prefer a procedure that doesn't alter your cornea
- You have chronic dry eye or eye sensitivity, since EVO ICL causes minimal dry eye
- You want to keep your options open for the future. Because the cornea stays in its natural shape, the full range of lens replacement options remains available later in life
- You were told you're not a candidate for LASIK
Your Advanced Vision Consultation confirms candidacy. The key measurements taken during this consultation are the space inside the front of your eye and the health of the cells on the inside of your cornea, both of which we measure directly.
EVO ICL vs. LASIK
LASIK corrects vision by reshaping the cornea. EVO ICL corrects it by adding a lens inside the eye and leaving the cornea alone. That difference is why the two suit different people.
For low to moderate prescriptions with a healthy, adequately thick cornea, LASIK is often the simpler choice. As prescriptions get higher, laser correction has to remove more tissue and its results become less predictable, while EVO ICL doesn't work that way. EVO ICL is also the better choice for thin corneas and for dry eyes, and it's reversible. Dr. Ling performs both, so the recommendation is based on your measurements.
Experience you can evaluate.
The people, the place, and the details behind your care.
Is EVO ICL safe?
EVO ICL is FDA approved. At Lucēre Vision, safety starts with screening. We measure the space inside your eye and the health of your corneal cells before recommending the lens, and at follow-up visits we monitor the fit of the lens, your eye pressure, and the health of your eye over time. The lens itself is designed to remain in the eye permanently, and it can be removed if that is ever the right choice.
Find out if EVO ICL is right for you
Start with an Advanced Vision Consultation. Dr. Ling will measure your eyes and tell you whether EVO ICL is the right choice for you.
Schedule a Vision Consultation
EVO ICL FAQs
Other procedures Lucēre Vision provides
If you aren't sure which one applies to you, schedule a Vision Consultation with our team to learn more.