LASIK Eye Surgery
There are a number of different types of laser refractive surgery (laser eye surgery) used to correct vision problems such as nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism. Most types work by reshaping the cornea. Depending on your vision problem, your Local Ophthalmologist eye health provider may recommend LASIK, PRK, EpiLasik, intacs or another treatment.
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What is LASIK Eye Surgery? <p><a href="https://www.healthchoicesfirst.com/practitioner-type/ophthalmologist"> Ophtholmologist,</a> discusses LASIK eye surgery as an option for some patients who want to eliminate the need for glasses.</p>Ophtholmologist, discusses LASIK eye surgery as an option for some patients who want to eliminate the need for glasses.
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Refractive Laser Eye Surgery - PRK, Lasik and SMILE <p><a href="https://www.healthchoicesfirst.com/practitioner-type/ophthalmologist">Ophthalmologist,</a> discusses the different types of refractive laser eye surgery to correct vision.</p>Ophthalmologist, discusses the different types of refractive laser eye surgery to correct vision.
What is LASIK Eye Surgery?
LASIK is considered by most refractive surgeons to be the gold standard of laser eye corrective surgery. What does LASIK involve? It involves reshaping the cornea, like all other laser eye surgeries, but specifically, by creating a small flap in the front of the cornea. The cornea is the clear part of the front of the eye.
We create a 100-micron flap, lift the flap up and apply an excimer laser – similar to the same laser that’s used for PRK, to reshape the surface of the eye. Put the flap back down, and let the eye heal over a very short period of time, giving patients a very fast recovery after having had laser eye surgery with minimal discomfort.
Candidates for LASIK could include anybody between a minus 10 to a plus 3 in terms of refraction or high myope or even a low hypero. The most important thing that your surgeon will look for when assessing your candidacy for laser eye surgery is to make sure that your cornea, which is the clear part of the eye, is thick enough to allow removal of some of the tissue.
Patients with severe dry eye, patients with autoimmune diseases, are not candidates for LASIK, and unfortunately will have to look at other opportunities to remove their glasses.
The side effects associated with LASIK include dry eyes, glare and halos at night. The other thing that LASIK patients need to be aware of, especially in the short term immediately after surgery, is they shouldn’t rub their eyes, because if they do, that flap can get dislodged and be moved and need to be repositioned.
Long term, for people particularly who are actively involved in contact sports or otherwise, if they get hit in the eye – even 10 or 15 years after having had surgery, they can move that flap. So if you’re into contact sports like boxing, or MMA, or other similar sports, LASIK may not be the right procedure for you
But for 99 percent of patients LASIK is a great procedure with amazing and phenomenal outcomes. To find out if you’re a candidate for LASIK, please talk to your optometrist or your local refractive surgeon, who will be more than happy to evaluate you and share their thoughts. Presenter: Dr. Baseer Khan, Ophthalmologist, Vaughan, ON
Refractive Laser Eye Surgery - PRK, Lasik and SMILE
Laser refractive surgery is a really exciting area with constant advancement and technology. There are three types of laser eye surgeries that are available today to try to remove glasses. All three of them have one thing in common, and that is that they’re reshaping the cornea, which is the front part of the eye. The oldest or the first laser refractive surgery was called PRK. PRK, we remove the epithelium or the surface of the eye, and then we apply an excimer laser to resurface or blade or vaporize the tissue on the surface of the cornea to reshape the cornea.
The second surgery is called LASIK. And LASIK, instead of removing the epithelium what we do is that we use a really thin blade or most commonly a laser, a femto laser, to cut a very thin flap of the cornea, lift the flap up, apply the excimer laser to reshape the cornea and put the flap back down. The third surgery is called SMILE. SMILE involves using a femtosecond laser, a cutting laser, to actually cut a little wafer of tissue inside the cornea and then take it out through a very small, two millimetre incision. For patients having PRK, there’s a much longer healing period as compared to SMILE or LASIK. These patients require a bandaged contact lens, because otherwise their eye would be very painful after having the epithelium or the skin removed.
It often takes about six to eight weeks for the vision to fully recover after PRK, and they can have a certain amount of haze as a result of the healing over the short period of time, which eventually will go away. SMILE and LASIK, because they’re leaving the front surface of the eye intact, often have a very quick visual recovery with very minimal pain or discomfort. There can still be a little bit of dryness and irritation in the short period of time, but these patients generally recover very quickly.
The most important thing that a doctor will look for in assessing a patient for laser refractive surgery is to make sure that their cornea is thick enough and that they don’t have any abnormal curvatures that could indicate another problem in the cornea called keratoconus.
In those patients, laser eye surgery should never be done, and they may need other therapies or treatments to treat their eyes. In the absence of any eye conditions like keratoconus or otherwise, somebody with a prescription of +3 to about -10 is a candidate for laser eye surgery.
Laser eye surgery is the safest surgery performed by medicine today. There’s a small risk that you could develop some dry eyes, some glare and halos, an exceedingly small risk that you could get an infection, but by and large, the vast majority of patients experience great vision, if not better than 20/20, after having had any of these surgeries. Often seeing a local Ophthalmologists or Optometrist in conjunction with your family physician or a registered dietician is a great option to dealing with eye conditions and symptoms. Smart Food Now and exercise is also important for overall health. Presenter: Dr. Baseer Khan, Ophthalmologist, Vaughan, ON