Laser eye surgery

As a specialist in cornea and refractive surgery, a subspecialty is laser eye surgery.  A typical patient is late 20s to early 30s and is sick of wearing glasses or contact lenses.

This could be because of a number of reasons – they may play sport or water sports, contact lenses may irritate their eyes or they might just not like wearing glasses.

LASIK

LASIK is a pretty well known term these days, though most people still know it as the generic term ‘laser eye surgery’ or ‘laser vision correction’. LASIK involves using two lasers, one to create what we call a ‘flap’, another to change the shape  of the eye. Really, they work together to achieve the purpose of allowing an individual to free themselves from glasses or contact lenses.

Not everyone is suitable for LASIK – for example, they may be too young, or too old, or have thin corneas. However, there is a vision correction procedure for the vast majority of people, so it’s worth booking a consultation.

ASLA (PRK)

ASLA stands for ‘Advanced Surface Laser Ablation’. It is sometimes known as PRK, but at Vision Eye Institute, the term ASLA is used to indicate the modern, advanced version of PRK.

ASLA is used when a person has a particularly thin or asymmetrical cornea. No flap is created, so the procedure is performed directly on the cornea.

Ultimately it has the same result, but it requires a longer recovery time, and eyes might feel gritty and sore for a few days.

Other procedures

About 5% of people aren’t right for both LASIK and ASLA – their cornea may be too thin or their prescription too high. These people can’t have laser, but they can have a lens implant (implantable contact lens) in front of the pupil of the eye. A typical person is someone in their mid 20s or early 30s who is many years away from possible cataract surgery.

If someone is in their 40s, I usually tell them that presbyopia  and reading glasses are inevitable. Monovision or blended vision is offered which means that the full distance correction is not done in one eye to allow ongoing reading vision. 80% of people can do this without a noticeable compromise in their distance vision. This can be shown to you before the surgery in spectacle frames or a contact lens. In patients over 50, monovision can be achieved with either laser correction or lens exchange. 

Again, it’s worth booking a consultation to find out what procedure is right for you.

Laser eye surgery

A/Prof Colin Chan explains what happens during LASIK, and the difference between LASIK and ASLA.

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