If you’re like me, you’ve probably heard about some of the side effects associated with getting lasik vision correction surgery. For instance, after getting lasik surgery some people complain about symptoms of glare, halos and decreased night vision.
In fact, I remember attending a business briefing where the lecturer started by mentioning he just had lasik surgery the day before. He told the audience, “The excellent news is I reckon you’re all going to heaven because everyone has halos around their heads!”
If you’ve considered getting lasik surgery but were concerned about some of the less-than-desirable side effects, you’ll be glad to hear that new technology is reducing persons dreaded halos and glare. Known as “custom” or wavefront-guided lasik, this relatively recent improvement in eye surgery technology produces better vision quality when compared to traditional lasik vision surgery.
“Most significant,” says US Navy Captain Steve Schallhorn, MD, the Director of Cornea and Refractive Surgery at the Navy Medical Center, San Diego, “is the improved quality of vision with the wavefront-guided procedure, fewer problems with halos and glare, better night vision, and higher patient satisfaction.”
Traditional lasik reshapes the patient’s cornea with a laser to right visual problems like nearsightedness or farsightedness. With conventional lasik, the laser is guided based on formulas akin to the ones used to determine your eyeglass prescription. Conventional lasik is effective at treating “lower-order” aberrations like nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism (also called “refractive errors”).
Wavefront-guided lasik, on the additional hand, measures how light is distorted as it passes into the eye and then is reflected back. This makes a 3-D optical map of the eye, highlighting the imperfections and disorders that lead to visual errors. Wavefront technology then makes a custom treatment plot for each eye and guides the laser during the surgery.
Wavefront-guided lasik can effectively treat the same lower-order aberrations that conventional lasik can treat as well as treating “higher-order” aberrations such as decreased contrast sensitivity, night vision, glare, darkness and halos. In fact, there are a growing number of patients rotary to wavefront-guided lasik to right side effects from previous laser eye surgeries.
“With this technology breakthrough, we can now measure these disorders, show the patient what’s going on in their eye, link that information to the laser, and really right higher-order aberrations,” says Roger Steinert, M.D., associate clinical professor of ophthalmology, Harvard Medical School. “Wavefront technology enables the general practitioner to increase overall vision quality better than in the past.”
Of course, this advanced technology comes with a higher price tag than traditional lasik surgery. And just like conventional lasik, wavefront-guided lasik is a surgical procedure and has risks associated with it. Be sure to consult with a qualified lasik general practitioner to discuss potential complications and ensure you’re a excellent candidate for this type of surgery.
But if the choice is between crystal apparent vision with no side effects and going owing to life seeing all the people going to heaven, I reckon I’ll go with the first option, please!
The Benefits Offered By Custom LASIK Eye Surgery
