For patients with moderate to high myopia, a new standard of precision, safety, and reversibility is now available right here in West Hollywood.
Author: Arthur Benjamin, MD
For the millions of people living with moderate to high myopia, clear unaided vision has long felt just out of reach.
LASIK has helped countless patients — but it is not the right answer for everyone. The EVO Visian ICL offers a compelling, elegantly reversible alternative: a lens implanted behind the iris that corrects vision without removing or reshaping corneal tissue, and that can be removed at any time.
At Benjamin Eye Institute, we have long believed that superior outcomes begin with matching each patient to the right technology — not simply the most familiar one. With the expansion of our West Hollywood facility to include a state-of-the-art in-office surgical suite featuring a Zeiss surgical microscope, hospital-grade sterile processing, and nearly three decades of surgical experience, we are proud to offer the EVO ICL as a premier refractive option for our most demanding patients.
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The EVO ICL, or Implantable Collamer® Lens, is a phakic intraocular lens — meaning it is placed inside the eye alongside your natural crystalline lens, rather than replacing it. Crafted from Collamer, a proprietary biocompatible material derived partly from collagen, the lens rests gently in the posterior chamber behind the iris and in front of the natural lens. It requires no fixation sutures and cannot be felt by the patient.
The “EVO” designation refers to the current generation of the implant, which incorporates a small central port that allows aqueous humor to flow naturally through the lens — eliminating the need for a preparatory laser iridotomy procedure. This design refinement has meaningfully streamlined the patient experience while further enhancing safety.
The EVO ICL is FDA-approved for the correction of myopia ranging from −3.0 to −20.0 diopters, with or without astigmatism. It is particularly well-suited for patients with:
High myopia — where LASIK may remove too much corneal tissue or produce suboptimal visual quality
Thin or irregular corneas — who do not meet the safety thresholds for laser ablation
Dry eye syndrome — since ICL does not disrupt corneal nerves and has not been shown to worsen dry eye
Active lifestyles — athletes and those with occupational demands that make corneal flap complications a concern
Patients seeking reversibility — who want the security of knowing the correction can be removed or exchanged as their needs evolve
Ages 21–60 — following the FDA’s recent expansion of the approved age range
“The ICL is additive and reversible — it preserves every option you have today, including future cataract surgery or a lens exchange as technology advances. That is a meaningful distinction.”
Patients with high myopia — defined as −6.0 D or greater, typically associated with an axial length of 26.5 mm or more — carry an inherently elevated risk of retinal detachment compared to the general population. This biological reality shapes how we counsel patients about surgical options and is, in fact, one of the strongest arguments in favor of the ICL over lens-based refractive surgery.
Refractive lens exchange — removing the eye’s natural crystalline lens to implant a corrective IOL — is sometimes considered for high myopes, but it introduces cataract-surgery-level retinal detachment risk into an already vulnerable eye. In extreme high myopia, with axial length greater than 33 mm, that risk has been cited as 11% or higher.
By contrast, a synthesis of 28 published studies encompassing more than 3,000 eyes found a retinal detachment rate of just 0.034% following ICL implantation. The American Academy of Ophthalmology has concluded that there is no evidence ICL increases baseline retinal detachment risk in high myopes beyond what would be expected from the myopia itself.
This distinction matters enormously for a highly myopic patient in their 40s who still has a functional natural lens.
The ICL corrects distance vision precisely, preserves accommodation, and keeps cataract surgery — with all of its premium IOL options — available in the future when it is naturally indicated. It is a strategy that keeps your options open rather than foreclosing them.
UV protection — the Collamer material inherently filters ultraviolet light, adding a layer of protection not provided by standard spectacles or contacts
Excellent optical quality — patients frequently report exceptionally crisp, high-contrast vision, particularly at night, compared to their experience with contact lenses
No dry eye induction — unlike LASIK, which severs corneal nerves and can trigger or worsen dry eye disease, the ICL leaves the cornea entirely intact
Rapid recovery — most patients notice dramatically improved vision within 24 hours of the procedure
Invisibility — the lens is not visible to others and cannot be felt by the patient
Fully reversible — the lens can be explanted or exchanged at any time, providing genuine flexibility as presbyopia develops or technology evolves
For all of its advantages, the EVO ICL has historically carried one source of uncertainty that gave thoughtful surgeons pause: lens sizing. Getting the size right is critical. A lens that is too short risks instability and rotation; one that is too long can vault excessively over the natural crystalline lens, raising intraocular pressure and — in rare but serious cases — accelerating cataract formation.
For most of the technology’s history, surgeons had to infer the critical internal dimension — the sulcus-to-sulcus diameter — from external measurements of the white-to-white distance, the visible span of the cornea. It was an imperfect proxy at best. The sulcus sits behind the iris, invisible to conventional imaging, and external landmarks correlate only loosely with the internal anatomy that actually matters.
This is no longer a limitation we have to work around. Two technologies — used together at Benjamin Eye Institute — have effectively solved the sizing problem.
UBM uses very high-frequency ultrasound to image the anterior segment structures that lie hidden behind the iris: the ciliary body, the sulcus, and the precise spatial relationships that determine how an implanted lens will sit.
It is the only imaging modality capable of directly measuring sulcus-to-sulcus diameter — the single most important variable in ICL sizing. Where conventional imaging ends at the iris, UBM begins. The result is a measurement drawn from the actual anatomy of your eye, not an estimate derived from a surface surrogate.
ICL Guru is an artificial intelligence-powered sizing platform that synthesizes multiple biometric inputs — including UBM measurements, anterior chamber depth, white-to-white distance, and refraction — to recommend the optimal lens size and power for each individual eye.
Rather than relying on a single variable or a generalized nomogram, ICL Guru applies a machine learning model trained on thousands of implanted eyes to arrive at a recommendation that accounts for the full complexity of anterior segment anatomy. The output is not a guess — it is a data-driven selection validated against real-world vault outcomes.
“Sizing was once the asterisk on every ICL consultation. With direct UBM measurement and AI-assisted planning, that asterisk is gone. We now select each lens with the same confidence we bring to premium cataract surgery.”
Together, these tools represent a genuine inflection point in the evolution of phakic IOL surgery. The theoretical elegance of the ICL — additive, reversible, anatomically independent of the cornea — has always been compelling. What UBM and ICL Guru provide is the precision infrastructure to match that elegance in practice.
The last meaningful source of procedural uncertainty has been addressed. For patients considering the EVO ICL at Benjamin Eye Institute, this is the standard of planning they can expect.
Exceptional outcomes require not only the right lens — but the right environment in which to implant it. Our recent facility expansion at Benjamin Eye Institute now includes a dedicated in-office surgical suite designed to the highest standards of sterile processing and procedural precision.
At its center is a Zeiss surgical microscope — the same class of instrument trusted in the world’s leading academic eye centers — providing unparalleled visualization and optical performance during each implantation.
Every EVO ICL procedure at BEI is performed by Dr. Arthur Benjamin, a board-certified ophthalmologist with nearly three decades of surgical experience in West Hollywood. Pre-operative planning integrates direct UBM measurement of sulcus-to-sulcus diameter, ICL Guru AI-assisted size selection, Scheimpflug anterior segment imaging, and meticulous peripheral retinal evaluation — so that by the time a patient arrives for surgery, every variable has been accounted for.
The best refractive procedure is the one designed around your individual anatomy, lifestyle, and long-term visual goals.
We invite you to schedule a comprehensive consultation at Benjamin Eye Institute, where Dr. Benjamin will review your complete ocular profile and discuss every available option with candor and precision.
The implantation itself typically takes 15 to 20 minutes per eye. Most patients are in and out of our surgical suite within a morning, with a driver to take them home comfortably.
The lens is designed to remain in place indefinitely, but it can be removed or exchanged at any time — a meaningful distinction from corneal laser procedures, which permanently alter tissue.
When cataract surgery eventually becomes indicated, the ICL is removed at that time and replaced with a standard or premium cataract IOL.
The ICL corrects distance vision; near vision after age 40 continues to follow the natural course of presbyopia. Most patients in their 40s are comfortable with reading glasses for close work — a straightforward trade-off for excellent unaided distance vision.
This is precisely why the ICL is considered ideal for patients in their 30s and early 40s: it delivers superb distance correction now, while leaving the full spectrum of presbyopia-correcting IOL options available for cataract surgery later.
The EVO ICL is an elective refractive procedure and is not covered by standard health insurance or vision plans. Our team will discuss all financing options during your consultation so that cost is never a barrier to exceptional care.
For patients with moderate to high myopia who have been told they are not candidates for LASIK — or who simply want a more sophisticated, reversible approach to their vision correction — the EVO ICL represents the current apex of refractive surgical technology.
With more than three million implants performed worldwide, an extraordinary safety record, and a biocompatible design that works quietly in harmony with the eye’s natural structures, it is a lens worthy of serious consideration.
We look forward to guiding you through that conversation at Benjamin Eye Institute.
Clarity, after all, is what we do.
Arthur Benjamin, MD is a board-certified ophthalmologist and the founder of Benjamin Eye Institute in West Hollywood, California. He has been in private practice since 1998 and holds a clinical faculty appointment at the Jules Stein Eye Institute, UCLA.
Benjamin Eye Institute
West Hollywood, California
This article is intended for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Individual candidacy for any surgical procedure must be determined through a formal clinical evaluation.
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