Coloured Contact Lenses

Lasik Eye Surgery Explained.

Lasik eye surgery is a procedure that can correct your vision by altering the physical properties of your eye. Unlike traditional surgical procedures that depend upon the skills and steadiness of the surgeon’s hand, LASIK eye surgery is computer controlled.

The more progressive LASIK surgery centers perform in-depth analysis of your eyes as an evaluation procedure to determine if you’re a good candidate for the LASIK procedure. The evaluation process, which is largely controlled by computer itself, maps the overall physical makeup of each eye. A traditional eye exam determines your visual abilities and then an exhaustive computer analysis determines if your eyes can be enhanced by the LASIK procedure.

In addition to determining whether or not you’re a good candidate for LASIK, the procedure also records quite a bit of data that’s specific to your eyes. If you choose to proceed with the LASIK eye surgery, this data is used to program the computer controlled LASIK equipment to insure that your eyes are modified exactly in the proper manner so as to provide maximum benefit.

How Your Eyes Work

The cornea of the eye is responsible for projecting light onto the retina in order to produce an image. When the cornea is not shaped properly, distortion of the image will occur. This is called a refractive error. LASIK eye surgery can correct refractive errors.

There are three primary types of refractive errors -

1) Myopia is a refractive error in which a person has trouble seeing things at a distance, but they can see things that are close up.

2) Hyperopia is when a person will be able to see things clearly at a distance but cannot see things that are close to them.

3) Astigmatism is the distortion of images caused by irregularities in the shape of the cornea.

LASIK eye surgery is also called refractive surgery because it will reshape the cornea, therefore improving the ability to focus clearly.

Not everyone is a good candidate for LASIK eye surgery. To be a good candidate for LASIK eye surgery, you have to be willing to accepts the risks that go along with this type of surgery. Your eyesight should be stable, meaning that it hasn’t changed appreciably over the past several years. Also, you shouldn’t have any existing health conditions that would put you at risk while having LASIK eye surgery.

Risks of LASIK Eye Surgery

LASIK eye surgery does carry some risks, such as loss of vision. In some extremely rare cases, the patient may lose vision due to equipment malfunction, scarring or healing related complications.

One common risk of LASIK eye surgery is that any dry eye condition that is experienced right after surgery may hamper the healing process. Signs of dryness are burning, redness and decreased vision. If this dry eye condition persists, you may have to medicate to improve tear duct function and use artificial tears to maintain the proper level of moisture. You must keep your eyes moist after LASIK surgery in order to promote healing.

Things to do Before LASIK Surgery

If you wear contact lenses, either soft contacts or rigid contacts, you should stop wearing your contacts at least three weeks before your initial evaluation by the doctor. On the day of surgery, you shouldn’t wear makeup or perfumes. Also, don’t wear any fuzzy clothing that is likely to disperse lint.

Make sure that someone goes with you on the day of surgery, since you’ll need someone to drive you home after the LASIK procedure. Before the surgery, the doctor may give you medicine to relax you and your vision may be a little blurry immediately following surgery. Also, special eye drops are administered prior to the procedure which can cause additional, but temporary blurriness.

LASIK eye surgery is relatively safe and it can free you from glasses and contacts. Before you commit to LASIK surgery, make sure that you consider all the advantages and disadvantages of having the procedure. Ask the doctor lots of questions so that you can make an informed decision about whether LASIK eye surgery is the right choice for you.

If your vision is imperfect, then you have probably considered lasik eye surgery at one point or another. Most people who are in this situation often pass this option up, however, because it seems expensive and time consuming. What people don’t understand is that this surgery is not nearly as expensive and they think.

Indeed, in comparison to the expense of an annual change of eyeglasses or contact lenses, as well as the accompanying visits to your ophthalmologist, lasik eye surgery is not very expensive. You can spend a great deal of money throughout your life if you wear spectacles of any kind. And as you age, and your sight experiences deterioration, the cost involved only increases.

If you see the situation this way, laser vision correction appears to be one of the greatest things you can ever do. Many benefits come from this process, and the most vital is that you’ll truly save money over the duration of your life. Once you’ve had lasik eye surgery, you won’t have to worry any more about the costs of contacts or glasses.

This means that this form of vision correction might actually be the cheapest route to take. There are tons of deals going on through various eye doctors and professionals. If you get your surgery during one of these deals, you stand to save even more money. Call around your local area to see what doctors are offering there.

Because your vision is not something that you can ignore, you must put out some money for this at some point. If you want to drive, read, or participate in other activities in your daily life, then you need to be able to see. It is vital to your overall standard of living, that you know how to see both close up and far away.

On comparing lasik eye surgery with glasses and contacts you will find there is not much difference in their cost. The fact that you have to pay for the surgery upfront does not mean that over a period of your life time you will not be spending as much or even more otherwise.

LASIK is becoming a confusing topic among consumers thinking of this highly technical lasik eye surgery. Dr. Martinez of Bethesda Maryland has produced a FREE report titled: “How LASIK & PRK Can Help You See Clearly. Visit http://www.lasik-pages.com to get the insider details.

Consideration of the size of your eyesight would be done if you were expecting a good result after laser eye surgery. However, a size of eyeballs is age determinant and is often referred to as part of the process of aging. The size of the eyeballs in this respect determines if the positioning of the cornea if laser light were beamed on it.

It is a good idea for you to anticipate the unknown in terms of possible ramifications from the surgery. Once you put in your guard against such, you will never be taken unaware. Being on this frame of mind will permit you to cure much faster and get the reconstructed eyesight you have ever desired.

Do you have a vessel sickness? If yes, I think you better stop considering laser eye surgery as an option in treating your eye disorder. This could really be dangerous for you and life threatening. Remember that your eye is the most important part of your body. So do not play with it. Refraining from laser eye surgery if you have this problem is a wise choice.

You went to a doctor and he recommends that you need to undergo laser eye surgery in order to correct your eye disorder. How will you absolve this news? Well, it is important you know what really laser eye surgery is. In a simple way, laser eye surgery is a medical procedure carried out on patients who have myopia, hyperopia or astigmatism. The procedure is basically to correct these disorders.

Compare with other types of surgeries; the improvement that you will have on your eye sight after laser eye surgery is short. You should be able to get your required vision back at least three days after the procedure. However, your ability to heal fast will still depend on you abiding by the post surgery instructions.

You can use the Internet to get all the information you want to know regarding laser eye surgery. Take time out and make your search. You will come across links that will give you websites on the places where this surgery can be done. Also, the quotes from different specialists could be available for your comparison.

Unlike any other type of laser eye surgery, LASIK type has far more benefits than the others. The practiced of method will for good correct your disorders. Moreover, by the result achieved, you will not have the need to worry about the buying and maintenance of contact lenses.

Having an eye examination carried out on you by your surgeon is a necessity you must be aware of as a pre-requisite for laser eye surgery. If your doctor did not do this, I think he might be missing it or check his capability. The fortune of a flourishing operation is in your hand.

Jon Ferriss writes frequently about laser eye surgery on his website.

Pros and Cons for Lasik with IntraLase

Those who have had a Lasik technique done, and those who are investigating having a Lasik vision correction procedure, know that the first step of that procedure is to create a small flap in order for the Lasik physician to reshape the cornea.  This flap is created by the surgeon, and can be done using a small blade or using a laser.  Using the laser is generally called a bladeless Lasik procedure, or IntraLasik, or IntraLase.

For those that are considering a Lasik procedure, this review should be helpful in order to determine the pros and cons of the Lasik procedure using IntraLase.  One comment to be made is that the risks and complications possible using the small blade are well known and documented, since that procedure has been done for years and has a database of millions of patients.

Granted, 90% or more of all Lasik patients have no serious side effects or even minor lasting side effects, but it is true that a large part of the complications from Lasik procedures stem from the flap made with the microkeratome blade.  Over the years additional techniques have been developed to further minimize such problems from the standard Lasik procedure.

The introduction of the laser to create the flap is a new frontier in the Lasik procedure.  The laser is used in combination with state of the art software to create a flap of a pre-programmed size at a specific depth and position.  During this process, a soft suction ring holds the eye in place, but this causes no discomfort to the Lasik client.  Generally the only effect noticed by most Lasik patients is a dimming of vision in the eye being worked on for the duration of the treatment of that eye.

The use of the laser creates very small bubbles of water and carbon dioxide that serve as a good buffer between the flap and the cornea itself, and so this Lasik procedure conserves the eye very carefully.  The whole process of creating a flap for one eye takes approximately one minute.

The advantages of using a laser to make the flap for the Lasik vision correction procedure is that there is no way that the cornea can be abraded, nor any chance of the wrong size or depth of flap, since it is all pre-programmed with Lasik software.  The exact vertical edges of the flap produced using this Lasik procedure help healing, and also decrease the possibility that the flap might slip or wrinkle if the eye is accidentally bumped or rubbed during the healing process.

There are very few cons to using a laser to create the flap during a Lasik procedure.  One is that the process takes a bit longer, up to a minute.  A second reason is that the low level suction during this phase of the Lasik operation does result in eye redness for about 5% of the patients, but this goes away within a few days.  The last reason is that there is still a difference in cost between intralase eye surgery and the traditional Lasik eye surgery, but hopefully that will decrease as the years progress.

Lasik Eye Surgery or ICL?

A number of people who are considering the Lasik procedure to correct their nearsightedness or farsightedness have of some potential problems of Lasik, and are wondering if there are other options.  Though more than 95 percent of the Lasik patients have a very successful procedure without any major side effects, there are choices for people who wish to improve their vision.  Let’s compare two, and discuss these choices with a reputable ophthalmologist.

Traditional Lasik surgery uses a scalpel to create a small flap in the eye, and then a laser reshapes the eye in order to focus accurately.  There are two more recent forms of Lasik, one that entirely uses a laser and does away with the scalpel.  Another variation uses a three dimension waveform for people with unusual eye shapes, and both of these are worth discussing with your ophthalmologist.

Those people with very thin corneas or other issues that make Lasik not a good candidate for their particular case can consider implantable contact lens surgery.  This is known as ICL in the eye surgeon’s lingo, and is a good alternative to Lasik to permanently correct vision.  These lenses function in exactly the same way as removable lenses, except that they remain permanently in the eye.  Like Lasik, they reshape the eye in order for it to focus accurately.  The patient will not feel the lens once the operation has been performed.

Lasik and ICL are similar in several ways.  Lasik can improve vision affected by nearsightedness and astigmatism, and ICL can improve these vision deficiencies also.  Both Lasik and ICL also have some of the same risks, one of these being that the correction is not accurate after the first operation is done.  Lasik is a much more frequently performed procedure, and less than 3 percent (according to the FDA) of these patients need to undergo additional surgery to further correct vision after the first Lasik procedure is done.

Like any operation, there is a chance of infection in either a Lasik procedure or an ICL operation.  Good post-operative care by the patient will minimize this and regular checkups at the Lasik or eye care center will nearly always clear this up without further complication.  In a small percentage of the cases, either Lasik or ICL patients may not achieve perfect vision and may need to continue to wear corrective eyewear, though usually not at the same strength as the original eyewear.

One advantage of ICL over Lasik is that ICL is a reversible procedure, where the implanted lens can be removed later if that becomes necessary.  Lasik involves the reshaping of the cornea to bring objects accurately into focus, and is permanent.  However, for a typical, healthy patient either Lasik eye surgery or ICL will generally bring about the desired improvement in vision.

Lasik is generally a less invasive procedure, and this is reflected in the current cost of the operation.  The current price for a Lasik procedure is between $500 and $2500 per eye, depending on the type of procedure and the presiding physician.  A typical price for ICL is between $1500 and $3000 per eye.  Do some investigation into the options offered, and select the eye care procedure that is best for your personal case.