LASIK and Eye Surgery Blog - Clearview Eye and Laser Medical Center

Thursday, January 3, 2008

LASIK for Severe Myopia

One of the disqualifying conditions for a LASIK candidate has long been myopia (nearsightedness) that's "too severe". It's been a judgment call by the LASIK surgeon. However, for many years now, some severely myopic people have been having LASIK anyway. But for lack of any solid research results, controversy has continued as to how effective LASIK can be for severe myopia.

The January 2008 issue of the American Journal of Ophthalmology has just published results of a study which evaluated high-myopia patients ten years after their LASIK surgery had been done. It was conducted by university researchers in Spain and Turkey. They worked with 118 patients -- 196 eyes. (In discussing LASIK research, one usually talks about 'eyes' rather than “people”.)

These 118 LASIK patients had needed strong eyeglasses before their surgery -- at least 10 diopters. (A diopter is the unit of measurement for a lens. A lens of 10 diopters is very convex and we would probably call such glasses "coke bottle glasses".)

The researchers found that:

  • 40% of patients now wore no glasses;
  • 60% of the treated eyes were within 2.00 diopters of 20/20 vision;
  • Only 5% of eyes had lost visual clarity to the extent of 2 lines on the Snellen eye chart;
  • The retreatment rate was 27%;
  • Only 2 of those 196 eyes had developed corneal ectasia. That is a complication of an over-treated eye, where too much corneal tissue has been removed, and the remaining tissue is not thick enough to contain the eye's internal pressure. The result is a bulging of the eye and vision impairment. This is one of the reasons why LASIK surgeons have been reluctant to treat severely myopic people, for fear that too much tissue would have to be removed for safety.

These results are thought to be very positive as to LASIK's effectiveness over the long term for severe myopia.

LASIK 10 years ago vs LASIK now

These people had LASIK 10 or more years ago. Since then, LASIK has improved and refined enormously, with Wavefront-guided treatments and IntraLase giving far superior results than any LASIK done 10 years ago. At ClearViewEye, we offer both Custom LASIK using the WaveScan wavefront system, and IntraLase. Give us a call or send an email if you’d like to look into things further.

posted by JennyK at 12:39 PM

Powered by Blogger

San Diego LASIK Center

Sandy T. Feldman, M.D., M.S. :: ClearView Eye and Laser Medical Center
6255 Lusk Blvd., Suite 100 :: San Diego, California 92121

“She’s the Surgeon to See”