LASIK Surgery

When considering LASIK surgery, it is important to be informed about the surgery, what to expect before and after and what risks may be involved.

In LASIK eye surgery, the cornea is reshaped to improve refractive error, which is a main cause of vision imperfections. Your eye works similarly to the way a camera uses light to reflect an image onto film. With a camera, the focusing of the light is used to create an image. The human eye does the same as it uses light to bring into focus an image in your view. What causes images to look distorted is that the shape of the cornea is misshaped, causing distortion.

During the LASIK procedure, a knife or laser is used to make an incision in the top layer of corneal tissue. The layer, known to surgeons as the "flap" is moved away during the procedure so that the inner exposed cornea surface can be reshaped with a laser to remove refractive errors.

History of LASIK

LASIK, an acronym for laser-assisted in-situ keratomileusis, was first performed in the United States in 1991 by Dr. Stephen Brint and Dr. Stephen Slade. The first automated LASIK surgery was completed that same year in Munich by German doctors Thomas Neuhann and Tobias Nuehann.

The first step toward the development of LASIK was a procedure created by Dr. Jose Barraquer in 1970. His contribution was the creation of a microkeratome, a knife that was used to cut thin corneal flaps and change the shape of the cornea. The procedure was called keratomileusis.

LASIK as it is known today was developed in 1990 by Lucio Buratto (Italy) and Ioannis Pallikaris (Greece). They were the first to combine two known surgical techniques in order to correct vision: keratomileusis and photorefractive keratectomy (PRK). PRK is a form of laser eye surgery that alters the shape of the cornea by burning off a small amount of eye tissue, but without first creating a flap as in LASIK. This procedure is not performed very often today because it is more painful than LASIK and takes longer for patients to recover from surgery.

The combination approach to laser eye surgery, creating a flap and then using the laser, was shown to have a lower number of complications and to be more precise in correcting vision than previous refractive laser methods.

Types of LASIK and Other Laser Eye Surgery Procedures

• Conventional LASIK: uses a microkeratome blade and an excimer laser
• Custom LASIK: wavefront-guided and wavefront-optimized to customize treatment
• Bladeless LASIK: uses a Intralase laser instead of a microkeratome blade
• Epi-LASIK: avoids using alcohol by using a plastic blade to remove the corneal layer
• LASEK: mostly used for people with corneas too thin for LASIK
• PRK: original laser eye surgery that is a no-flap procedure
• Presby LASIK: still experimental, a possible type of laser correction for prebyopia