Laser Surgery - The different types of laser

An explanation by Dr. Aleksic’s treatment centre optometrist, Rianda.
Dr. Zoran Aleksic FCS (SA) Ophth, is an eye surgeon and Ophthalmologist specialising in cataract and laser refractive surgery (Lasik / PRK laser refractive surgery for short sightedness, far sightedness and astigmatism). Dr. Aleksic’s treatment centre is located in Sea Point in Cape Town.
Dr. Zoran Aleksic and his team have long been recognised both in South Africa and the rest of the continent for providing high quality eye care with a full spectrum of treatments, from prescribing glasses and contact lenses to complex and delicate eye surgery using the latest technological equipment, all in a relaxed and professional environment.
Visit our website: www.eyesurgery.co.za
Transcript:
Different types of lasers:
Today I am going to talk to you about different types of laser surgery that is available. There are a few things that we need to know first in order for us to be able to tell you whether you are a suitable candidate.
The first thing is we need to make sure that your prescription is stable and that means for a few years in a row your script should not change. This is because we can actually only laser what we are measuring on the day. If you are going to regress or progress to a different script
we can't predict where you're going to end so we want to know that the script is stable. The second thing that we need to know is what your cornea looks like. Is it thick enough? Do we have enough cornea to work with and is the shape of the cornea regular? We can't do the laser on the shape of a cornea that is not completely regular. I'll touch up on that a bit later. Again for the third thing that you need to know is that laser is possible for farsighted people, short sighted people as well as astigmatism. You refer to that as my myopia, hyperopia and astigmatism.
There are two types of laser and that we are currently doing and the one is called LASIK and the other one is called PRK. The LASIK procedure is the more popular procedure because we regain your vision to an appropriate level the day after surgery. How the LASIK actually works is if you think of a book and this is your cornea, the window of the eye, we create like the first page of the book we open so that we can create apply the laser on the second blank page. What's nice about that is we put that first place page back and you have almost no discomfort, a little bit of dryness and that's why your vision following day is already where we basically want it to be. In order for us to be able to do LASIK you need in relation to your prescription enough cornea for us to create that first page and be able to apply the laser onto the second page. In cases where your prescription is maybe higher and your cornea is a bit thinner and we calculate that there's not going to be enough for us to create what we call a flap, they will consider doing the second type of laser procedure which is called PRK.
Now, in PRK we apply the laser directly onto your cornea. What we first do is we take the first layer of your cornea. The cells we take off and then the laser gets applied directly onto the cornea. What we then do is put a bandage contact lens on. When we say bandage; it's just a clear contact lens because we want you to have a contact lens on so when you blink it's going to be not too uncomfortable.
The difference between PRK and LASIK:
The eventual outcome is exactly the same but with PRK you are only three weeks down
the line where you are already on the first day of after LASIK so it takes longer for you to get to the appropriate level of vision that we want you to have. The thing with PRK is also that you are slightly more uncomfortable because we've removed the first layer of your cornea. What we need your cornea to do there is to regain and to regenerate those cells that we have removed. Usually, how it works with PRK is the following day you come for your follow-up appointment. We have a look to see how the cells are regrowing and they only on the fourth or fifth day after the surgery will remove the contact lens. Afterwards we will give you a lubricant so you can use that as much as you want to in order for you to have more comfort.