What is Laser Eye Surgery?

In order to decide whether or not laser eye surgery (also known as LASIK) is the best option for you, you must be well informed about all the factors related to this type of procedure. We'll now go over the most important ones: the mechanism behind the operation itself, the problems that may appear when going through this kind of surgery and the average cost.

After deciding to have the operation, your surgeon will present you with the requirements you need to fulfill before having the actual procedure. If you wear soft contact lenses, you will most certainly have to stop wearing them 5 to 20 days before the operation. In case of hard contact lenses, this period of time increases to a minimum of six weeks.

Since the actual operation only takes a few minutes, you will be totally awake and mobile during the procedure. You will, however, be given anesthetic eye drops, so that the discomfort will be minimum.

The first step of the surgery is flap creation or, in other words, temporary removing a thin layer of the cornea in order to expose the stroma (the middle section of the cornea). Once this step is complete, the surgeon will remodel the corneal stroma using an excimer laser. No cutting or burning with heat is required; the laser safely vaporizes the tissue, not damaging the adjacent part of the cornea.

The final step of the surgery is repositioning the flap that was previously removed from the eye.

Once the surgery is finalized, you will most probably be given a course of anti-inflammatory eye drops and antibiotics.

As in any other procedure, there will always be certain risks attached to laser eye surgery. However, before going into the most common postoperative complications, you should probably know that the patient satisfaction rate worldwide is 95.4 percent!

The most frequently reported complications include dry eyes, light sensitivity and visual acuity fluctuation.

For more information on the subject, please visit Laser Treatment for Eyes, and also Laser Eye Surgery Side Effects.