PRK Technology

At ClearView Eye and Medical Center, we offer state-of-the-art PRK technology to people in the San Diego area. The star of our technology cast is the VISX Star S4 IR laser. VISX Star lasers have been used and depended upon for years, and the S4 IR laser takes reliability and precision further.

Custom-i LASIK (Advanced CustomVue)

This is a sophisticated procedure, which allows your refractive surgery to be designed based on a scan of your eyes. Using WaveScan technology a beam of light is sent into the eye in a straight line, bounces back off the retina, and then returns to the WaveScan system. This beam of light returns not as a straight line, but as a curved line, which reflects the unique characteristics of your eye.

Our eyes bend light; also known as refracting light, due to their curvature. Both the lens in our eyes and the cornea, the clear part on the front of the eye, bend light rays, with the cornea providing about 75 percent of the light refraction. This is the basis for LASIK refractive surgery. All refractive surgery modifies the shape of the cornea, changing its curvature so that it will bend light at just the right angle allowing it to land precisely on the retina.

The retina is the inside surface of the eye and is full of light-sensitive nerve cells. When the light rays come to a focus on it, the nerve cells send image information via the optic nerve to the brain. If the light rays focus on front of the retina instead of exactly on it, the image information is incomplete and objects in the distance appear blurry or fuzzy (nearsightedness). If the light rays focus behind the retina, again the image information is incomplete and objects relatively close up appear fuzzy or blurry (farsightedness).

The WaveScan technology takes the returning light waves from each eye and translates it into a 3-D map of your eyes. Using the WaveScan computer, Dr. Feldman can then create your treatment plan, locating the exact tiny spots on the cornea that need to be corrected in order to give the cornea the right curvature.

Advantages of the VISX Star S4 IR laser

• It uses the WaveScan WaveFront System to create a superbly precise map of your eyes.
• It's a cool, ultraviolet, excimer laser which is computer-guided during your treatment.
• It is so precise that it can etch tiny grooves in a human hair. Each pulse of light removes only 0.25 microns of corneal tissue (that's about 1/100,000 of an inch).
• The laser can be adjusted in its size, shape, and speed of pulses, making it very safe and very customizable.
• The procedure takes only a few minutes. To treat nearsightedness, it removes tissue from the center of the cornea, flattening it. To treat farsightedness, it removes tissue from the periphery of the cornea, increasing it's steepness. To treat astigmatism, it makes the cornea more round rather than oval-shaped.

All-laser LASIK (IntraLase™)

The other important laser in our arsenal is the IntraLase 60 KHz femtosecond laser.

You might have been told ten years ago that you were not a good candidate for LASIK. But now, with new technological developments over the past ten years, that might not be true any more.

If you were given that verdict based on your corneas being too thin for LASIK, there's good news. The IntraLase FS laser creates the corneal flap, instead of the hand-held microkeratome. What does this mean?

When the corneas are thinner than average, there's a risk that the microkeratome might cut too deeply and injure the layer underneath the surface, also known as the stroma. Or in trying to cut a more shallow flap, it might cut one with a hole in its middle (a buttonhole flap), or might cut the tissue off entirely, leaving no hinge.

This risk is abolished by the use of the IntraLase FS laser. The laser light comes in fast little bursts of light which penetrate the corneal surface to a predetermined microscopic depth. Each pulse of light creates a tiny bubble below the surface, which accumulate until they've covered the area designated in the treatment plan. The laser doesn't affect the surface of the cornea, but penetrates below it.

Dr. Feldman can then separate the corneal tissue where these bubbles have formed and fold this round flap back out of the way to do your LASIK treatment.

This means that people with thinner corneas can now have refractive surgery. They can have bladeless, safe IntraLase, an ultra-precise procedure using an ultra-fast laser.

As one of San Diego's most renowned eye surgeons, Dr. Sandy Feldman is devoted to improving your vision and your life. Call or email us today to schedule your PRK complimentary consultation or to receive our quarterly e-newsletter.

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ClearView Eye and Laser Medical Center provides advanced PRK technology in the San Diego, California area. We offer this web page as general information. This information should not be considered formal medical advice. Please contact us today for formal advice during a complimentary PRK consultation in San Diego.