LASIK or Lasik, commonly referred to as laser eye surgery or laser vision correction, is a type of refractive surgery for the correction of myopia, hyperopia, and astigmatism. LASIK is considered by most refractive surgeons to be the gold standard of laser eye corrective surgery.

SMILE is a laser refractive surgery procedure that involves reshaping the cornea by using a femtosecond laser, which is a cutting laser, to create a little wafer of tissue within the cornea. And then that small little wafer is removed through a two-millimetre incision.

So unlike LASIK there’s no flap created, and the tissue is removed through cutting, not ablation. The risks associated with SMILE are like LASIK: dry eye and halos. There is a small risk of regression, meaning that you could drift back a little bit to your old prescription, but if that happens you can often have an enhancement.