subject: Lasik Surgery: Choose The Very Best For Your Eyes! [print this page] If you have been thinking about having Lasik eye surgery, it is essential that you fully educate yourself about the procedure and the process. I am often surprised by how many interested patients do not fully understand the different variations of Lasik that are available and how that can affect them and the visual outcomes of their surgery. There is certainly a great deal of technical information to absorb and it can be difficult to sort out. But understanding these little details can make all the difference in the world.
Are you confused by all of the high tech terminology used with Lasik that you find on the Internet? You may have heard of Customized Lasik treatments or read the term Wavefront Guided Lasik. What do these words mean and is it really worth it?
Wavefront technology utilizes extremely advanced optical methods previously used only in applications by NASA in their telescopes. Astronomers use these types of techniques when they view planets at a distance. Because atmospheres of planets are very irregular and unpredictable, they can create weird optical effects. Wind, clouds, and other atmospheric effects create distortion of objects on that planet when viewed through telescopes on Earth. Using specialized computerized techniques, these objects can still be brought into focus.
With regard to the eye, think of it this way: glasses or contact lenses can be made with near perfect precision in a lab. This kind of optical precision does not occur naturally in the human eye. Obviously, your eye is made of human tissue, so in some ways it can also be optically irregular and unpredictable just like the planets atmosphere we talked about earlier. So we can use the same kind of computerized wavefront technology used by astronomers to focus on distant planets and apply it to the irregular surface of your eye.
Corneal tissue, which is the outer optical surface of your eye, is like any other tissue on your body, It has many individualized aberrations and warping. The likelihood of two human individuals having identical corneas is about the same as them having identical fingerprints. The laser technology used in your eye surgery works best if we are able to accurately recognize the individual patterns (the little lumps, bumps, and warps) in your cornea in order to precisely reshape it. The Customvue Wavefront technology like that used in the Visx Star S4 IR laser allows us to find and treat these unique optical aberrations while correcting your vision.
Wavefront guided Lasik is currently the gold standard of Lasik technology. This technology gives us better visual outcomes than older tools ever could with a greater chance to achieve 20/20 or better vision for you. It likely gives us better contrast sensitivity (ability to distinguish shades of gray) and night vision as well. Although the old Lasik technology gave good results, the newer Wavefront guided Lasik produces even better outcomes. To phrase it simply: this is the absolute utmost technology that can be used in a laser eye surgery procedure. When you have Lasik, most likely you will only do it once in your life, so you should do it right. It is like building your dream home which is meant to be for life: you would not skimp on the details there. So with Lasik, I always recommend that you use the best technology which will give the most excellent results. Because when you go for your once in a lifetime Lasik surgery, you want the outcome to be as good as possible.
