John Berdahl, MD, and David Hardten, MD, collaborated to launch Astigmatism Fix in 2012 as a freely available tool to help surgeons and patients solve an often tricky and frustrating problem: residual astigmatism after toric IOL placement. Unfortunately, due to issues such as surgically induced astigmatism and posterior corneal astigmatism, rotating a lens to the pre-operative determined axis or the post-operative steep K axis may not minimize a patient’s astigmatism. Astigmatism Fix considers a patient’s manifest refraction and the current power and location of the lens to determine not just the ideal axis for the lens, but also the expected refraction if the lens were at that position. 

Shortly after the platform’s launch, Brent Kramer, MD, joined the initiative and has been instrumental in curating data, implementing platform improvements, and cultivating its growth. In 2024, Dr. Kramer introduced ICL Fix, a tool that builds on the principles of Astigmatism Fix to provide surgeons with specific guidance for toric ICLs, further expanding the platform’s capabilities and enhancing its utility for modern refractive surgery.

In 2025, the Astigmatism Probability Calculator was added to the Astigmatism Fix platform and serves as a separate calculator surgeons can use pre-operatively to determine the expected post-operative refractive astigmatism if corneal astigmatism is not addressed during lens replacement surgery.

Since its launch, Astigmatism Fix has been used hundreds of thousands of times to help patients see the world more clearly.