PRK Eye Surgery

One of the first corrective eye surgery techniques was photorefractive keratectomy (PRK). While PRK eye surgery is grouped in the laser eye surgery category, it uses a different laser surgery technique than LASIK, and in some cases may be preferable to LASIK.

For PRK eye surgery, an excimer laser is used to reshape the cornea by ablating, or removing, very tiny bits of tissue. Reshaping the cornea changes the refraction and more precisely focuses light into the eye and retina. PRK eye surgery produces a gradual improvement in vision, rather than the very quick result seen with LASIK. In people who have near-sighted vision, a cornea that is too steep may be flattened; in those who are far-sighted, the cornea is reshaped to be more steep. An astigmatism can be corrected by smoothing the irregular shape of the cornea into a more regular shape.

LASIK Eye Surgery

LASIK is an acronym for Laser Assisted In Situ Keratomileusis. Although people use many variations of the term - lazer eye surgery, lazik eye surgery and/or lasix eye surgery - the correct term is the acronym, LASIK.

There are now different options for LASIK eye surgery.

Bladeless laser: Even highly specialized and experienced refractive laser surgery physicians have disagreements about the benefits of "bladeless" laser eye correction versus "blade" laser eye correction.

"Bladeless" laser eye correction surgery is actually surgery performed using the IntraLase (Abbott Medical Optics) to create the corneal flap for LASIK eye surgery. It is now marketed under the name iLASIK. In traditional, or "blade" LASIK eye surgery, the flap is created using a surgical instrument called a microkeratome (or "blade"). Bladeless LASIK surgery is supposed to have better outcomes, with faster recovery. The bladeless procedure also makes it possible for the surgeon to tailor the corneal flap dimensions to the individual eye, which is supposed to also contribute to better postoperative outcomes.

What the patient needs to understand that the bladeless technique only means that a surgical blade doesn't cut the corneal flap; a corneal flap is still created. The only difference is that in bladeless LASIK, the flap is created using laser instead of a surgical blade.

Wavefront Eye Surgery

Wavefront eye surgery is also sometimes referred to as custom LASIK. Wavefront is a technology that provides something of a roadmap for LASIK eye surgery procedures. It can be used with all types of laser eye surgery procedures.

Think of light as traveling in flat sheets known as wavefronts. The light waves are distorted as they pass through imperfections in the eye. With wavefront technology, the errors are displayed in a color map, or wavefront image. The tool is then used to diagnose aberrations in the eye and determine how best to correct them with laser eye surgery.

The wavefront technology as it applies to custom LASIK eye surgery brings an entirely new level to surgical eye correction. Not only does it improve visual acuity, it also has the ability to correct higher-order aberrations in vision, such as image contrast and fine details. The LASIK surgery can tailor the laser beam settings and make the resulting laser eye correction more precise, resulting in sharper, crisper, better-quality vision with fewer of the traditional side effects, such as nighttime vision problems, halos and glare.