If you enjoyed our podcast from yesterday, you heard Dr Deepinder Dhaliwal talk about her squeeze chop technique where she traps the hemi-nucleus between the chopper and the phaco tip (without vacuum) for nucleo-fractis. This has the advantage of being time insensitive. In traditional phaco chop we use the vacuum holding power of the phaco tip to engage the nucleus while the chopper splits it. This higher vacuum can only be sustained for a second or two until the nucleus begins to soften and the suction is broken. This is why for traditional phaco chop there is a window of a second or two in which to accomplish the chop. With this squeeze-chop technique, there is no time constraint and the surgeon can take as much time as needed to achieve the nuclear separation. What do you think of this technique?
