What is refractive surgery?
Refractive surgery is a procedure that can eliminate or lessen the need for wearing eyeglasses or contacts. Whether a person is nearsighted, farsighted, or has astigmatism, refractive surgery can often correct the problem. Undergoing such a procedure enables many people to live their lives without worrying about purchasing new glasses or contacts every one to two years. These eye surgeries are expensive and usually not covered by health insurance. During the 1980s, a refractive procedure called radial keratotomy (RK) became popular with those who sought freedom from glasses and contacts. During this operation, the surgeon made incisions in the outer areas of the cornea. As a result, the central part of the cornea was flattened. RK surgeries had the ability to correct mild to moderate cases of nearsightedness. During the same time period, a procedure called astigmatic keratotomy was also introduced, where circumferential incisions were made on the cornea. Over time, more advanced refrac
Clear vision is the result of light rays passing through the cornea, pupil and lens and focusing directly upon the retina. If the cornea is not round or is too steep or too flat in relation to the length of the eye, light rays focus either in front of or behind the retina, resulting in “refractive errors” such as nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism. Refractive Surgery is a term for several procedures designed to treat these vision abnormalities by altering the way your eye focuses light by changing the shape of your cornea Function Of The Eye In a normally structured eye, the cornea is a rounded curve. Light rays pass through the cornea and the pupil to the lens, which further “refracts” or focuses the light directly onto the retina creating a sharp and clear image. Myopia Myopia is the medical term for nearsightedness. This is a condition in which light rays entering the eye are focused in front of the retina instead of directly on it as in the normal eye. Myopia is an inh
The most common impairment of vision is caused by errors in refraction (or focus). Refraction occurs when light enters the eye through the cornea and lens. Refractive errors result when light rays do not come to a focus on the retina, causing the conditions of myopia (nearsightedness), hyperopia (farsightedness), or astigmatism. There are three available methods to help correct refractive errors. The first two use lenses to redirect the incoming light to focus and include glasses and contact lenses. The third is an excimer laser refractive procedure such as PRK or LASIK which can reshape the cornea to better focus incoming light. Photorefractive keratectomy (PRK) uses the excimer laser to correct nearsightedness or astigmatism by removing a small amount of tissue from the corneal surface. This reshapes the corneal surface, allowing it to better focus the image on the retina, with the goal of reducing a patient’s reliance on eyeglasses or contact lenses. With laser in situ keratomileusi
