Choosing Between Traditional and Custom Lasik
Lasik eyesight-correction surgery, a phenomenal breakthrough when it was first approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration in 1995, has recently been trumped big-time by the innovation known as wavefront Lasik technology, which is some 25 times more precise than its older cousin. The consumer still has both choices available today - the traditional versus the new custom technique - but there is an enormous difference in technology.
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Preventing Rising Number of Post-LASIK Infections
The presence of dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria on patients about to undergo LASIK vision-correction surgery has increased dramatically during the past decade, a recent study showed. Infections occur rarely in LASIK patients, but statistics indicate that rates are slowly increasing.
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LASIK Surgery Can Cause Dry Eye Syndrome
While LASIK eye surgery in most cases results in vision improvement to 20/20 or better, an occasional subject becomes affected by a chronic condition in which the eye has a problem with lack of lubrication.
This condition is known as dry-eye syndrome. It can affect those who have not undergone LASIK surgery, a procedure that is not recommended for such people. Screening by eye surgeons is supposed to exclude all dry-eye sufferers from LASIK, but some get through and often experience a worsened condition after surgery.
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Good Pupil Diameter Key for Successful LASIK Surgery
Laser eye surgery, hugely successful for the great majority of patients, can fail if a subject’s pupils are too large.
Thus, a good eye doctor who wants to provide patients with LASIK surgery (short for laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis) to correct faulty vision – including nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism – will carefully screen applicants for the procedure.
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New Laser Eye Surgery Helps "Presbyopic" Patients
A new eye surgery technique has proven excellent at eliminating a common vision condition affecting most middle-aged and elderly people, a recent study showed.
The condition, known as presbyopia, starts to appear around age 40 and causes blurring in one’s near vision as the eye’s natural lens gradually loses its flexibility. A nearsighted person with presbyopia can’t see up close with his usual glasses or contact lenses, but is able to see nearby things clearly without them.
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Synchrotron X-Ray Research Being Used to Advance LASIK
British researchers using X-rays from a massive particle accelerator are investigating the human cornea and making discoveries that could help create the next generation of LASIK eye surgery – and even one day develop an artificial cornea.
Keith Meek, head of the Structural Biophysics Research Group at Cardiff University, and his colleagues have beamed special X-rays from the Synchrotron Radiation Source (SRS) in Daresbury and the Diamond Light Source in Oxfordshire onto both diseased and normal corneal samples to analyze the cornea’s structure of collagen protein fibers.
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LASIK's Reality: Impermanent for Many
LASIK eye surgery effectively and safely corrects severe nearsightedness, the results lasting for at least 10 years – but a significant proportion of the procedures need to be redone during that time, a recent study revealed.
Moreover, only 40 percent of LASIK patients avoid the use of glasses altogether after surgery, and for a great many, there is some vision deterioration over the 10-year period, the researchers wrote in the American Journal of Ophthalmology.
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LASIK Treatment Can Induce Cornea Clouding
While laser eye surgery typically results in miraculously restored vision, there are some cases in which the very center of the cornea clouds up and actually worsens vision.
That’s the bad news, according to a recent study done by a pair of Los Angeles ophthalmologists. The good news is that the opacification of the cornea dissipates on its own in a few months, and the vision problem it produces can be safely reversed with another laser surgery.
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Strengthening Eye Collagen Fixes 2 Vision Disorders
Two little-known but related eye conditions, one stemming from LASIK vision-correction surgery, plunge sufferers into a world of blurriness and sensitivity to glare and light. But a novel development involving treatment with vitamin B2 drops and ultraviolet light, already approved in Europe, helps sufferers' vision improve.
The conditions, known as keratoconus and iatrogenic keratoconus (or ectasia), affect about one in 2,000 people. They are characterized by a weakening of the thin, transparent film (the cornea) on the surface of the middle of the eye, which eventually results in a cone-like bulge, progressively destroying vision. Corneal transplants used to be the only effective remedy, and the two disorders account for 15 percent of them.
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Help for Those Beyond LASIK's Help
Although LASIK eye surgery gives the gift of restored vision to hundreds of thousands of Americans each year, there are some people who are so nearsighted - near or past being legally blind - that the laser surgery simply can't help them.
For those people, implantable contact lenses may be the answer. These lenses are permanently inserted beneath the surface of the eyeball.
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