How Safe Is Lasek Anyway Lasek continues to be proven 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 getting the procedure. The danger related to lasek is under that related to contact lenses, so that as far as infection goes, it represents a little one-time risk, as opposed to the ongoing risk of infection with contacts.
Laser eye surgery's safety has been experimented with and assessed by government and military organisations such as the US Navy, the Australian Army, and NASA. Their investigations reveal that blade-free LASIK (ie. creating 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 lasek to make sure their finest 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 for that reason will always have the potential for complications. Such complications are generally rare and try to manageable though, that we will discuss below.
Enhancement:
LASIK surgery is performed on the eye, an organic tissue. Although the procedure is very accurate, there is an average 3-4% risk the correction will be decent although not absolutely optimal. In these instances, It's my job to wait around A few months to guarantee the stability from 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 therefore are therefore better. An excellent benefit of laser eye surgery is the fact that, although highly stable in the long term, should anyone experience any refraction transfer of their vision, enhancements such as these can be at almost any amount of time in the future.
lasik surgeryChance of infection:
As mentioned before, the rate of infection as a result of laser eye surgery procedures is very low, much less than infections resulting from contact lenses. Corneal scarring caused by infection occurs even less than this, for a price of under One in 20,000. Of course this occurs, it is correctible with a corneal transplant. As a corneal subspecialist, I've performed lots 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 (like a buttonhole flap). However, blade-free (femtosecond laser) LASIK eliminates this risk altogether, and for this reason enhanced safety, it's the only type of lasek 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 a rise in anti-inflammatory eye drops. If cells on the cornea grow (epithelium - a really rare occurence), they will generally absorb and disappear. If they ever proliferate, the flap could be lifted and also the offending cells removed.
Dry Eye:
Temporary dry eye phenomenon is made when the nerves of the cornea are cut, which occurs during laser eye surgery. It can take about 3 months for these nerves to regenerate. During this period I would 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 have been corrected by corneal transplantation, however fortunately pre-operative screening of patients has increased in accuracy, meaning candidates unsuitable for lasek are nearly always identified prior to the procedure. Recent advances within the technique of collagen cross-linking also allows us to stop this rare complication from progressing further, and lets the individual maintain their vision while avoiding a cornea transplant. I am one of few eye surgeons around australia who's experienced in this and can perform it during my surgery, however I haven't required to perform it by myself patients.
find a lasik surgeonGlaring and Halos:
After the procedure, patients sometimes see starbursts or halos around lights in the night. This really is most often due to the corneal flap dehydrating and stabilising, and it is rare to determine this phenomenon persist more than in regards to a week.
Quality of vision:
The majority of patients believe their vision after lasek is preferable to their vision with glasses or contacts prior to the operation. There is always a very small minority who experience visual quality less crisp than their pre-operative vision, but this case is usually rectified by laser enhancement.
Laser eye surgery's proven and maintained history of safety, accuracy and efficiency make it the clear treatment for becoming independent from contacts or glasses. Recent advances in blade-free femtosecond LASIK takes this to new levels, and surely represents the peak of eye surgery and vision correction.