If you are seriously contemplating, or even thinking about, having Lasik (Laser-assisted Eye Surgery), this Blog post was written just for you.

 

Disclaimer and Conditions: Any articles or information written in this eBook/blog are for EDUCATION AND INFORMATION PURPOSES OF THE USER/READER ONLY. While every conceivable effort has been made to present accurate, comprehensive, up-to-date, objective and truthful information regarding Lasik and other types of refractive eye surgery, the information is not, in any way, to be regarded as specific medical or diagnostic information or advice.

N.B. THE INFORMATION CONTAINED HERE IS NOT INTENDED IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER TO REPLACE, OR TO BE SUBSTITUTED FOR, ONE-ON-ONE CONSULTATIONS AND/OR EXAMINATIONS BY A PROFESSIONAL, QUALIFIED OPTOMETRIST AND/OR OPHTHALMOLOGIST.

The user/reader assumes entire responsibility for verifying the accuracy of information contained here and for the use made of the materials and information presented in this eBook/blog. None of the materials presented in this eBook/blog may be relied upon by any person for any medical, diagnostic or treatment reasons whatsoever. None of the materials presented here may be relied upon by any person for any purpose other than educational and informational purposes.

Eric Solomon, Robert Solomon, Peter Solomon and anyone else who may be in any way associated with the writing and/or publishing and/or disseminating of this eBook/blog, disclaims any and all liability and hold themselves blameless for any injury or other damages resulting from the review or use of the information obtained here.

Important - PLEASE NOTE: None of the above individuals or the Optometric group they serve, has any links to, interest in, affiliations with, or receives financial benefit from, any Ophthalmologists or Eyecare clinics offering Lasik surgery or any other form of ophthalmic surgery. They are therefore totally unbiased - either for, or against, Lasik. They have many patients within the group who have had highly successful Lasik surgery and are ecstatic with their results. They also have some other patients who were not so lucky and have been left with lasting complications of varying degrees of severity. These patients require ongoing help in coping with the aftermath of their surgery.
The only aim and objective of this eBook is to inform, to “tell it like it is”, objectively, honestly and truthfully.

The Completely Objective Lasik eBook: Copyright © 2003 - 2009 Eric Solomon All rights reserved
The contents from this eBook/blog may not be copied, in whole or in part, in any format whatsoever, without the express, written permission of the author or other refractive surgery. Their only connection with such Ophthalmologists or clinics is to deal with a select panel of experienced and trustworthy eye surgeons to whom they refer any patients of the group suffering from non-elective pathological conditions such as glaucoma, age-related macular degeneration, detached retina, keratoconus, cataract and so on. Any person reviewing the materials presented here should obtain specific medical advice, a detailed medical examination and answers to specific medical questions, from a qualified Ophthalmologist and/or Optometrist.

By reading or reviewing any material in this eBook beyond this disclaimer page, the reader/user/reviewer acknowledges his or her total understanding and acceptance of the above terms and conditions of this disclaimer.

 

Life-Changing Decision

This series of Blog posts will help guide you through one of the most critical decision-making processes of your life, the outcome of which will affect you for the rest of your life - for better or for worse.

My name is Eric Solomon. I am the Marketing, Corporate Relations and Client Services Director of Optisight, SpecsDirect and Complete Eyewear group of Companies in Cape Town, South Africa. We specialise in Occupational and Corporate Visual Health, Family Eyecare and Child Vision care. We have a wholesale division, we import our own frame ranges and lenses and we have our own optical laboratories for surfacing lenses and manufacturing completed spectacles. You might say we cover every single aspect of visual health and eyecare.

In our patient base of well over 20, 000 patients (and counting) we have quite a large number of patients who have opted to have Lasik. Many are overjoyed with the result and would have it again in a heart-beat. 

But . . . there are some who were less fortunate with their outcome. And for them, their way of life has either changed permanently and dramatically for the worse, or, in some really bad cases, their life has become one never-ending torment of excruciating pain and suffering. In fact, a living hell.

That’s why I’ve chosen to begin this new Blog - Science and Miracles - with a series of totally objective and informative articles on the procedure of Lasik surgery. So anyone considering having the procedure will have enough objective information to be able to make an INFORMED decision whether or not it is for them. 

Neither I, nor any of my colleagues, nor our group of Companies are in any way connected to, or involved with any clinic or ophthalmic surgeons that perform Lasik surgery. Although, as mentioned before, we are sometimes called on to help with the after-effects of the surgery.

If you are seriously contemplating, or even thinking about, having Lasik (Laser-assisted Eye Surgery), this Blog post was written just for you.

It will help to guide you through one of the most critical decision-making processes of your life, the outcome of which will affect you for the rest of your life - for better or for worse.

The process of corneal laser surgery is truly a miracle of modern science and has brought joy and a new lease on life to millions of patients around the world.

However, all surgery carries an element of risk . . . sometime large, sometimes small . . . but the risk is there. Don’t ever let anyone play down or evade the issue of risks involved.

When you begin your journey of investigation, you will probably be told things like “statistics show this” or “statistics show that” , or “you have a 99% chance of a glorious result” . What that means, quite simply, is that the practitioner you’re speaking to, probably a total stranger to you, is quite willing to bet on the statistics, to “play the odds” and gamble with your eyesight and your well-being.

“But,” you say, “99 -to-1 is very good odds, isn’t it?”

Of course it is. It’s brilliant odds … in a casino. In any casino in the world, you’d be crazy not to grab at 99-1 odds in your favour. But in a casino, if you happen to be unlucky enough to be in the losing 1% and lose some money, you could most probably just shrug off your losses with a grin, go home, sadder and hopefully wiser and forget about it.

Not so with refractive surgery like Lasik.

Here, being in the unfortunate 1% is nothing to just shrug off, you definitely won’t feel like grinning, and — you take your losses home with you. Forever. Many Clinics and eye surgeons claim to have done tens of thousands of Lasik operations. So far, conservatively, an estimated 2 million patients or more have had this operation. Let’s accept the statistic generally given and say “only” one percent of those operations went badly wrong.

That would still mean there are in the region of twenty thousand post-Lasik patients “out there” who are in constant, unrelenting pain of varying degrees, or have severe eye problems, or are clinically blind — due to Lasik surgery.

Statistics don’t mean a thing, if you happen to be in the unlucky one percent. In that case, the risk for you was 100%.

Never forget, you are an individual, not a statistic. And, if you’ll excuse the pun, refractive eye surgery of any sort is not something you should rush into blindly. The Completely Objective Lasik eBook has been written to provide you with objective, truthful, unbiased information about different aspects of this type of surgery. In it, you will learn:

•  What you should know before surgery
• What will happen during surgery
• What to expect after surgery
• What makes a “good candidate”
• What makes a “bad candidate”
• What type of equipment is used
• The Benefits of having Lasik
• The Risks of having Lasik
• A non-Surgical Alternative to Lasik
• A new Product That Finally Offers Lasting Relief from Dry Eyes
• Frequently asked questions
• Glossary of terms

…and much more

The glossary of terms explains a good deal of the complicated medical jargon often used in refractive surgery in easy-to-understand plain English.

The list of frequently asked questions (FAQs) and their suggested objective, unbiased answers, arms you with some idea of what you should expect to hear when you ask your Optometrist and/or Ophthalmologist the same questions.

The Completely Objective Lasik eBook is not intended to frighten you away from having a wonderful procedure that could immensely improve the quality of your life, as it has done for hundreds of thousands of patients around the world.

 It is intended to help you decide … from a more informed and knowledgeable viewpoint … whether the procedure you are considering and the surgeon you are considering having it done by, are right for you.

But first — let’s look at this miracle we call sight …

 

Understanding Our Miraculous Sense of Sight

From the instant we are born, one of the first things we become aware of in this world is a priceless, incalculably precious miracle nature has bestowed on us - the miracle of sight.

It is through this miracle, before any other, that we begin to discover the beauty and wonders of the universe around us. If you are planning to consider any type of refractive surgery such as Lasik, PRK, RK, Lasek, ALK, P-IOL or others — or even if you have already had one of them — it is an excellent idea to know something about the astonishing way your vision works.

Our eyesight is a complex and intricate gift most of us don’t fully appreciate . . . unless we happen to lose it. It is an amazing process we usually take totally for granted. Every time we “look” at any object, this wonderful process goes into action. Here’s how it works:

Firstly, light is reflected from whatever you happen to be looking at, towards your cornea, the thin, clear front part of your eye that covers your iris, (the Iris is the coloured part of your eye). The cornea detects this light and proceeds to bend and focus the light by a process called refraction, through a hole in your eye called the pupil, onto the lens behind it.

Your lens, in turn, focuses the light onto your retina - a layer of delicate tissue that lines the inside wall of each eye. (The retina can be compared to the little square of film just behind the lens in a camera.) The refracted light from the cornea and lens gets captured by the retina, which transforms the images into minute electrical signals, which then get sent to your brain.

Your brain decodes those electrical signals into a form we can understand and we are then able to “see” the motorcar … book … armchair … girl … sky … or whatever it is we happen to be looking at.

And even more miraculously, this entire process takes place literally “in the blink of an eye”, simultaneously for both eyes, and merges the two different images each eye sees into a crisp, sharp, clear 3-D picture.

That is, unless something goes wrong with “the system”.

Perfect vision depends on having perfect “equipment”. However, vast amounts of people have corneas and eyes that are not shaped perfectly. The images that reach their retina are unclear or blurred. Optometrists call these defects in the focusing power of the eye “refractive errors“.  

There are three basic types of refractive errors. These are:

• Myopia, which is when a person sees objects that are close to them far more clearly than they see distant objects.
• Hyperopia, which is when a person sees distant objects far more clearly than they see objects close by, and –
• Astigmatism, which is when the cornea becomes slightly oval, like a rugby-ball, instead of being completely round. This causes a distortion of the image that reaches the retina.

It is very common to have various combinations of myopia-astigmatism or hyperopia-astigmatism. Your Optometrist will prescribe glasses or contact lenses to compensate for any such imperfections in your eyes.

Various surgical procedures, known as refractive surgery, have been developed to improve the focusing power of eyes that are less than perfect. In LASIK surgery, this is done by using a specialised laser to precisely remove very controlled amounts of tissue from the cornea to reshape it and change its focusing power.

What is Lasik Surgery, exactly? Keep on reading. . .

 

What Is The “Flap” All About?

A Guided Step-by-Step Journey

Through a Lasik Operation

There can never be any conversation about Lasik without involving extensive discussion about “Flaps“. So, let’s see what the “Flap” is all about.

Lasik is a technique of eye surgery developed to improve natural vision and diminish a person’s reliance on eyeglasses or contact lenses. The word “Lasik” stands for Laser-Assisted In Situ Keratomileusis and is a procedure that permanently re-sculpts and changes the shape of the cornea - the clear covering of the front of the eye. (The word Laser is itself an acronym that stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.)

Let’s go on a step-by-step journey through the procedure of a Lasik operation, and see exactly what happens once the operation begins. The entire process normally takes no more than 30 minutes or so. It may take even less.

Step 1

You will enter the examination room in which the operation is to be performed. The first thing you’ll see is the Laser equipment, which consists of a large machine with a microscope and a computer screen attached. You will be asked to lie down and make yourself comfortable in a reclining chair.

 

Step 2

The Ophthalmologist (eye surgeon) will place some anaesthetic drops in your eye to make it go numb, and the area all around your eye will be thoroughly cleaned. When the Ophthalmologist is sure the numbing drops have taken effect, an implement called a lid speculum will be put in place to hold your eyelid open.

 

Step 3

A ring of sorts will be placed over your eye, and a great deal of pressure will be applied to create suction on your cornea, bringing it forward. You will probably feel the pressure and experience a certain amount of discomfort, and perhaps, some anxiety during this part of the operation.

 

Step 4

A special device called a microkeratome, with a sharp blade attached, will then be attached to the ring. The blade will now be used to cut through the front of your cornea, creating a flap. (This is the “flap” I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter.) The surgeon will carefully leave a hinge at one end of this flap, and the flap itself will be folded back on the hinge to expose the stroma, the middle section of your cornea.

Step 5

Once the cutting of the flap is complete, the microkeratome will be removed and you will be able to see, but not very clearly. You will experience varying degrees of blurred vision throughout the rest of the procedure. The eye surgeon will then fold the flap back on its hinge and dry the exposed part of your cornea.

 

Step 6

The laser equipment will now be placed in position over your eye and you will most likely see a bright light, which the surgeon will ask you to stare at. This is not the laser itself. It is simply there to act as a focal point for you to look at to keep your eye perfectly still, while the laser is turned on. 

 

Please keep in mind - with most laser equipment your eye MUST NOT MOVE while the laser is vaporising part of your cornea. If you are not able to stare at a fixed object for at least 60 seconds without moving your eyes, you may want to seriously re-think the whole idea. You may not be a good candidate for Lasik. (More recent laser equipment is able to track small amounts of eye movement, but not all surgeons have the very latest equipment.)

 

Step 7

Once everything is in readiness and your eye is perfectly still, the computer-controlled laser will be turned on. Carefully monitored pulses of energy will then vaporize a predetermined portion of your stroma. You may hear a ticking sound coming from the laser and you may be aware of a slight odour, like burning hair.

(The precise amount of cornea to be removed will have been predetermined by the surgeon during your first evaluation.)

 

Step 8

When the laser has done its work, it will be moved out of the way and the flap will be hinged down and replaced over your cornea.  No stitches are used to keep it in place. It will simply be moved back into its original position over your cornea, but it is vital for you to realise that nothing is keeping it there. It is still a loose flap.

 

Step 9

A shield will be placed over your eye to protect it from accidentally being bumped or poked. The shield is also there to prevent you from rubbing it. Remember - there are no stitches holding the flap back in place. Under no circumstances must you rub it or put any pressure on it, even while you are asleep.

 

Step 10

After a rest, or perhaps a short nap, to recover, you will be told you may go home. Make sure you have someone with you to do the driving. You will not be able to see nearly clearly enough to drive yourself. The last thing in the world you need now is to have an accident on your way home that may dislodge the flap.

Our next post will deal with what needs to happen before the “Main Event”. Come back soon . . .