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LASIK Eye Surgery
Contact lenses can be a big improvement over
wearing glasses, but even though it looks
like you have perfect vision, you still won't
see clearly any time you remove your contacts.
Fortunately, there are now minor surgical
procedures that can restore your vision so
that you can see without any aid at all.
Surgery reshapes the clear outer
surface
of your eye (known as the cornea)
to form
a new, corrective lens as part
of your eye.
There are many variants of the
procedure,
but they fall into two large
classes:
- Laser Assisted in Situ Kerotomileusis (LASIK)
is the cutting of a very small lens (about
3/8 of an inch in diameter) underneath a
flap at the point where you look out the
front of your eye. During surgery, your doctor
peels back the flap, cuts the new lens by
evaporating a thin layer of the cornea with
a laser, and then replaces the flap. The
flap seals in a few days and heals completely
in less than a month. LASIK can treat nearsightedness,
farsightedness, and astigmatism. (Laser Epithelial
Keratomileusis (LASEK) is almost identical
to LASIK except that the flap and the lens
are cut into the layer above that of LASIK
and closer to the surface of the cornea.
- Radial Keratotomy is the cutting of grooves
in a circular pattern like rays from the
sun on the surface of your cornea to alter
the shape of the cornea and the way light
passes through it to create a corrective
lens. Variants treat astigmatism (the muddled
focusing of vision due to variations in the
surface of the eye).
Between these two approaches, LASIK is by
far the most common. |
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