Laser For Eye Treatments

Eye surgery is one of the most delicate medical interventions. The eyes region is rich in blood vessels and nerves, so even the smallest mistake during a surgery routine may have catastrophic consequences, resulting in blindness, massive bleeding or other complications. This kind of procedures were very difficult to make with classic techniques. The invention of lasers and their development as medical, surgical tools decreased the risks of those patients who had to go through eye surgery, either for correcting a vision impairment, or for stopping progressive diseases such as cataract or glaucoma.

Laser Eye Surgery Types

The first laser eye surgery ever used was PRK, which is the acronym for photo refractive keratectomy. It is also known as ASA, or Advanced Surface Ablation. Invented somewhere in the 1980s, PRK was introduced in the US only in 1995. Before that, Americans needed to go on medical tourism trips in Canada or in other countries in order to benefit from this type of surgery. The basis of this surgical procedure is an excimer laser which is used for removing little fragments of the cornea surface, with the purpose of reshaping it, in order to correct sight vices. PRK is suitable for both nearsighted and farsighted patients, as well as for astigmatism correction.

The decision whether or not you are to be elected for PRK eye surgery belongs to your eye doctor. The ophthalmologist will run a series of tests on your eyes, such as making a topographic map of your cornea, in order to determine how severely you are affected and how much of your corneal tissue will have to be ablated in order to give you back your clear sight. If you suffer from other medical conditions, you should inform the eye specialist, because some of those diseases may forbid you go through an eye surgery of this kind.

This laser treatment is done ambulatory, which means that you don't need hospitalization after the surgery. In fact, the whole operation takes about one minute, more or less, depending on how bad your vision defect is. Together with your surgeon, you'll decide whether you want to have surgery on both eyes in the same day, or you'll come back after a week or so for the second eye. Beware that you won't be able to drive after the surgery, so you have to ask somebody to take you home from the hospital.

Another type of refractive laser eye surgery is LASIK, the laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis. This procedure can also correct myopia, hyperopia and astigmatism. Lasik gained a lot of popularity, because it is less painful than PRK and because the patient recovery is faster. Roughly, the Lasik procedure consists of removing a thin flap off the eye, folding it, then using an excimer laser to ablate and remodel the corneal tissue beneath the flap. After adjusting the eye curvature as required, the flap is put back in place, then the eye is healing by itself, in a natural process. This three steps eye surgery is done without putting the patient asleep. It is also ambulatory. The postoperative care mainly consists of an antibiotic and anti-inflammatory eye drops. Sometimes, dark shades are needed to protect the eyes from bright sunlight.

There are several types of Lasik surgery. One of the variations is the wave-front guided Lasik, in which the surgeon is guiding the laser movement with the help of a wavefront sensor. Some eye surgeons claim that this procedure decreases the probability of visual artifacts caused by spherical aberrations induced by the laser correction. However, there are no scientific studies to support this statement.

Before going for eye surgery, patients tend to inform themselves about the complications that may occur during and after a Lasik or PRK intervention. We are going to talk about these in a future article. for now, I can tell you that the satisfaction range of the patients who were subject to Lasik surgery is between 92% and 98%. This satisfaction rate was measured in medical studies.