My ZEISS Expert Talk at SOG 2026: Life With Trifocal Lenses in My Own Eyes
- Posted
- Medically Reviewed by: Mr Mfazo Hove, Consultant Ophthalmic Surgeon
- Author: Mr Mfazo Hove
- Published: August 20, 2026
- Last Updated: August 20, 2026
The day after I had trifocal lenses implanted in both eyes, I was on holiday, reading a menu in the sun without glasses for the first time in decades. My vision was already good enough to operate. I took the ten days off anyway.
That was April 2024. Two years and four months later, ZEISS has invited me to Lausanne to stand at their booth at SOG 2026, the annual congress of the Swiss Ophthalmological Society, and tell an audience of European eye surgeons what those lenses are actually like to live with. The talk is called My Journey with ZEISS AT LISA tri, and it takes place on Thursday 27 August at 16:00 at the ZEISS booth, number 11, at the Swiss Tech Convention Center. No registration needed. Just turn up.
The subject is not a technique, a device launch or a dataset. It is my own eyes.
The official ZEISS invitation to the expert talk
Both Sides of the Operating Microscope
I have performed more than 57,000 procedures and implanted thousands of premium lenses. In April 2024 I had the ZEISS AT LISA tri 839MP trifocal intraocular lens implanted in both of my own eyes, on the same day, and I now teach internationally about a lens I carry inside them.
Patients have told me that this perspective influenced their decision to consult me; some had already begun their assessment elsewhere. What they wanted was a surgeon who could describe the lens from the inside. Not what the brochure says. Not what the average patient reports. What it is like at two in the morning on a motorway, or first thing in the morning with a dry eye, or on day 850, when the novelty has long worn off and only the truth is left.
The ZEISS speaker announcement for the in-booth expert talk
Why My Colleagues Want to Hear This
Here is something patients rarely see: plenty of excellent ophthalmologists are cautious about trifocal lenses. Not because the evidence is thin. It is not. Peer-reviewed studies of the AT LISA tri consistently report high visual quality across distance, intermediate and near, with high rates of spectacle independence and patient satisfaction ¹ ² ³, including one series of more than 10,000 eyes ⁴. The hesitation comes from somewhere else. Published outcomes describe averages, and every surgeon privately worries about the patient who falls outside the average.
At every congress dinner, sooner or later, someone asks the real question: yes, but would you have one yourself? Most surgeons answer in the hypothetical. I no longer have to. I did. Both eyes. One day. In my experience, nothing shifts a colleague’s reluctance to offer this technology quite like a fellow surgeon describing life with the lens in clinical language: the genuine quality of the vision, and the compromises, stated without spin. When surgeons become confident, patients are counselled properly and offered the right technology at the right time. That is why I said yes to Lausanne.
What I Will Actually Say
Thirty minutes, built entirely on lived experience. The headlines:
The scorecard, honestly marked. Distance vision is the best I have experienced with any lens I have ever implanted. Intermediate is seamless. Near is N1, the smallest standard print size. There is no point in my day when I think about where the lens changes focus. It does not feel like three focal points. It feels continuous. I own no spectacles.
The compromise, stated plainly. Do I see glare and haloes around lights at night? Absolutely. They are real, and for me they are completely tolerable. I do not believe we help anyone by pretending premium optics have no optical consequences. The skill is identifying, before surgery, the patient for whom those consequences would matter, and steering that patient towards a different solution.
The lens is not always the problem. My worst vision of the day is the moment I wake up, and it has nothing to do with the lens. The optic has not changed overnight; my tear film has. Within minutes of blinking, it clears. Two years on, the biggest day to day fluctuation in my vision is not the multifocality. It is my ocular surface. The teaching point for surgeons: exclude everything around the lens, the refraction, the tear film, the macula, the capsule, before you blame the optic.
Neuroadaptation is not a spectator sport. The brain has to learn a multifocal optic, and imaging research shows that adaptation is an active neurological process, not a passive one ⁵. My clinical version of that finding is simpler. Patients who push their near vision from day one, small phone fonts, packet labels, the fine print, adapt better and faster than patients who protect themselves with large print and reading glasses. The patient who tells me at six weeks that their near vision is disappointing will, almost invariably, hand me a phone with the text set to enormous. These days I do not just advise them to shrink the font. I take the phone and change it myself.
I stopped trying to be a sommelier of lenses. With a whole market of premium platforms available, I concentrate my premium practice on one I know completely: how it performs, how patients experience it, how to counsel for it, and how it behaves in my own eyes. I explain every optical strategy and its trade-offs, and then I do the thing patients come to a specialist for: I recommend.
Transparency, Including the Follow-Up
My journey also includes one of the most common late events after cataract or lens replacement surgery, and I refuse to edit it out of the story. In March 2026 I underwent YAG laser capsulotomy, a five minute outpatient laser treatment for posterior capsule opacification, the natural clouding of the lens capsule that can develop after cataract or lens replacement surgery. My vision was fully restored within hours. I tell patients about it in consultation and I will tell a room full of surgeons about it in Lausanne, because radical transparency about outcomes, including my own, is the foundation Blue Fin Vision® is built on.
What This Means if You Are Considering Lens Surgery
If you are weighing up trifocal lens surgery, for cataract or as refractive lens exchange, this is what it comes down to. Your consultation at Blue Fin Vision® is with a surgeon who uses the technology professionally, lives with it personally, and has been invited by the manufacturer to discuss it with fellow surgeons. When I tell you what night driving is like with a trifocal lens, or how near vision builds over the first six weeks, I am not quoting a brochure. I am describing my own eyes.
The ZEISS speaker announcement for the in-booth expert talk
- Event: ZEISS at SOG 2026, the annual congress of the Swiss Ophthalmological Society
- Dates: 26 to 28 August 2026
- Venue: Swiss Tech Convention Center, Lausanne, Switzerland
- Expert talk: My Journey with ZEISS AT LISA tri, Mr Mfazo Hove
- When and where: Thursday 27 August 2026, 16:00, ZEISS booth, number 11
- Registration: No registration needed for the in-booth session
Join Me in Lausanne
If you are attending SOG 2026, come and join me at the ZEISS booth on the Thursday afternoon, and ask me the difficult questions. I enjoy them more than the easy ones. If you are considering trifocal lens surgery yourself, the same discussion, including the advantages, the compromises and my own experience, forms part of every consultation at Blue Fin Vision®.
References
- Mojzis P, Peña-García P, Liehneova I, Ziak P, Alió JL. Outcomes of a new diffractive trifocal intraocular lens. J Cataract Refract Surg. 2014;40(1):60-69.
- Sheppard AL, Shah S, Bhatt U, Bhogal G, Wolffsohn JS. Visual outcomes and subjective experience after bilateral implantation of a new diffractive trifocal intraocular lens. J Cataract Refract Surg. 2013;39(3):343-349.
- Kohnen T, Titke C, Böhm M. Trifocal intraocular lens implantation to treat visual demands in various distances following lens removal. Am J Ophthalmol. 2016;161:71-77.
- Bilbao-Calabuig R, Llovet-Rausell A, Ortega-Usobiaga J, Martínez-Del-Pozo M, Mayordomo-Cerdá F, Segura-Albentosa C, Baviera J, Llovet-Osuna F. Visual outcomes following bilateral implantation of two diffractive trifocal intraocular lenses in 10 084 eyes. Am J Ophthalmol. 2017;179:55-66.
- Rosa AM, Miranda ÂC, Patrício MM, McAlinden C, Silva FL, Castelo-Branco M, Murta JN. Functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess neuroadaptation to multifocal intraocular lenses. J Cataract Refract Surg. 2017;43(10):1287-1296.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mr Mfazo Hove
Consultant Ophthalmic Surgeon
MBChB MD FRCOphth CertLRS
Mr Mfazo Hove is a Consultant Ophthalmic Surgeon with experience spanning more than 57,000 procedures. He completed 6.5 years of specialist training at Moorfields Eye Hospital and served for five years as a consultant at the Western Eye Hospital, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. He is the founder of Blue Fin Vision®, a consultant-led private ophthalmology practice operating across London, Essex, and Hertfordshire. His clinical expertise encompasses advanced cataract surgery, refractive lens replacement, laser vision correction, and implantable Collamer lenses (ICL).
A ZEISS Key Opinion Leader, Mr Hove is a respected international speaker with five invited engagements across seven cities in 2026:
- ZEISS China tour (Changsha, Shanghai, and Hangzhou, April – ZEISS APAC User Meeting)
- RCOphth Annual Congress – May – Manchester
- ZEISS EMEA User Meeting (Istanbul)
- ZEISS Lausanne User Meeting (Lausanne)
- European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons Annual Congress (ESCRS, London)
