How Safe Is Lasek Anyway Lasek continues to be tried and tested over its 23 years of existence. Over 36,000,000 LASIK procedures happen to be performed throughout the world, and nobody has lost an eye from having the procedure. The danger associated with laser eye surgery is under that associated with contact lenses, and as far as infection goes, it represents a small one-time risk, as opposed to the ongoing risk of infection with contacts.
Laser eye surgery's safety has been attempted and assessed by government and military organisations such as the US Navy, the Australian Army, and NASA. Their investigations show that blade-free LASIK (ie. developing a corneal flap having a femtosecond laser) is safe and approved for that SAS, Top Gun pilots and NASA astronauts.
Professional sportspeople also provide used laser eye surgery to make sure their best performance around the field. Including sportspeople such as Tiger Woods and David Beckham, whose vision correction procedures undoubtedly allows them to perform at their peak.
Despite having such an exceptional safety profile however, laser eye surgery continues to be surgery, and therefore will invariably have the possibility for complications. Such complications are usually rare and try to manageable though, that we will discuss below.
Enhancement:
LASIK surgical treatment is performed around the eye, a natural tissue. Though the procedure is very accurate, it comes with an average 3-4% risk the correction is going to be decent but not absolutely optimal. In these instances, It's my job to hold out A few months to ensure the stability of the residual glasses prescription, then lift the same corneal flap created earlier to "fine tune" the procedure's outcome. These enhancements are minor corrections, and are therefore better. A great advantage of laser eye surgery is the fact that, although highly stable in the long term, should anyone experience any refraction shift in their vision, enhancements such as these can be at almost any time in the near future.
lasik surgeryChance of infection:
As i've already explained, the rate of infection as a result of lasek procedures is extremely low, far less than infections caused by contacts. Corneal scarring resulting from infection occurs even less than this, at a rate of under One in 20,000. Of course this occurs, it's correctible with a corneal transplant. As a corneal subspecialist, I've performed a lot of corneal transplants, but have never had to perform one because of this.
Corneal flap issues:
Blade LASIK introduced the risk of creating an abnormal flap (such as a buttonhole flap). However, blade-free (femtosecond laser) LASIK eliminates this risk altogether, and due to this enhanced safety, it's the only type of laser eye surgery I perform.
With blade-free laser eye surgery, inflammation underneath the flap can occasionally occur (this is known as diffuse lamellar keratitis), and may be managed by an increase in anti-inflammatory eye drops. If cells around the cornea grow (epithelium - a really rare occurence), they'll generally absorb and disappear. When they ever proliferate, the flap can be lifted and the offending cells removed.
Dry Eye:
Temporary dry eye phenomenon is made once the nerves from the cornea are cut, which occurs during lasek. It can take about 3 months of these nerves to regenerate. During this period I'd advise replenishing the tear film with lubricating drops.
Ectasia:
Ectasia is fortunately a really rare occurrence by which laser vision correction causes the cornea being too pliable, and therefore bulges forward over time. Extreme cases of ectasia happen to be corrected by corneal transplantation, however fortunately pre-operative screening of patients has increased in accuracy, meaning candidates unsuitable for laser eye surgery are almost always identified prior to the procedure. Recent advances within the manner of collagen cross-linking also permits us to stop this rare complication from progressing further, and lets the patient maintain their vision while avoiding a cornea transplant. I am one of few eye surgeons around australia who's experienced within this and can carry it out during my surgery, however haven't required to carry it out on my own patients.
find a lasik surgeonGlaring and Halos:
Following the procedure, patients sometimes see starbursts or halos around lights at night. This is usually due to the corneal flap dehydrating and stabilising, which is rare to see this phenomenon persist more than about a week.
Quality of vision:
Nearly all patients believe their vision after lasek is better than their vision with glasses or contacts prior to the operation. There is always a really small minority who experience visual quality less crisp than their pre-operative vision, but this situation is generally rectified by laser enhancement.
Laser eye surgery's proven and maintained track record of safety, accuracy and efficiency make it the clear strategy to becoming independent from contacts or glasses. Recent advances in blade-free femtosecond LASIK takes this to new levels, and surely represents the height of eye surgery and vision correction.