Wavefront Lasik

Background behind my Wavefront lasik surgery

Since I was 8 or 9, I have been wearing eyeglasses and you can just imagine how relieved I was when I got my wavefront lasik a few months ago. For the first time, I didn’t have to wear eyeglasses and didn’t have to look like a geek. Yes, my classmates in 3rd grade until the 12th grade always taunted me as a geek. I had metal braces, big thick eyeglasses and shy personality.

Before my surgery, the optometrist reading was -3.75 and -4 for my left and right eye respectively. I was nearsighted and my classmates used to laugh at me when I put the book too close to my eyes when our teacher asked us to read. The thick eyeglasses was thicker than the glass material of our dining table. It was really embarrassing.

My Wavefront surgery

I endured those taunting looks from my college classmates and now that I’m working, I decided that I’ve had enough of those. I wanted to be free from thick eyeglasses and I want to look like a normal person. I want to walk on a busy street without people exchanging stifled laughs at me.

I approached my eye doctor and told him that I wanted to try wavefront lasik. I had researched a lot about lasik and laser eye surgery on the internet and I was resolute that I would get the best eye treatment. The reason why I chose wavefront lasik was because from my research, it was the most accurate and used the most modern wavefront technology and it didn’t give complications as other lasik surgeries.

I was very impressed with the procedure. Now, I am completely free from thick eyeglasses. My vision is 20/20 and even though I still get nearsighted once in a while, over the months since I had my wavefront lasik, the occurrences have declined to a few instances every week.

Lately, we hear a lot of people who have complaints against their traditional LASIK operation. The most common complaint is their night vision. Patients find it very hard to impossible driving at night because of glare and halo. When they look at lights, the see large halos or the lights look like huge star bursts. A new technology called custom wavefront lasik is studied to reduce these kinds of complications.

As the name suggests, custom wavefront lasik is customized to the need of each patient. It gives the surgeon the map or guide from which to perform the operation. It is considered to be more accurate because it uses light to create a blueprint of the eye of the patient. This blueprint software will then assist the surgeon in the creation of incision in the cornea.

Many internet sites say that the complications of traditional lasik will go away after a few months. But patients who have to work every day cannot wait for months for the glare and halo to go away. Some patients report that the complications didn’t go away altogether. There are some nights when they still experience the complications.

Over the years, the development of technology makes it less scary for patients to undergo lasik. Custom wavefront lasik is more dependable than traditional lasik because it uses the accuracy of computer in the operation. Lasik is still the best treatment for vision problems such as nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism but the complications are less if patients choose to get it with wavefront lasik.

When you go to the opththamologist or optometrist to have you eyes checked, they will do examinations with eye charts and phoropter. With the eye charts, the eye specialist will ask you to read the letters one by and and you’ll tell them if you see the letters clearly or not. With the phoropter, they will put different lenses on you and you will tell them which among the lenses you think your eyes need. The technology used in wavefront lasik might completely make these two ways of examining your eyes obsolete.

The traditional technologies of analyzing your vision problems are very subjective. Patients can read the letters but the eye experts don’t know how blurred the letters are to the patients. The patients tell them if the lenses are right for them. In short, it is based on what the patients think they are need and not what actually they are seeing.

With wavefront technology, a light is passed to your eyes which will scientifically and accurately tell what about your eyes is giving you vision problems. The light waves that travel through the eyes during a wavefront examination will tell you if the problem lies in the shape of your eyes (too long or too short) or the way your eyes are places in the axis.

The same technology is used in wavefront lasik. The procedure is the same with traditional lasik eye surgery and wavefront lasik eye surgery. The only difference is that the latter uses the superior technology of wavefront.

Lasik surgeons and eye doctors agree that Wavefront lasik provides more accurate treatment of the eye than the traditional lasik. Both of them use laser to reshape the cornea of the eye but the difference lies in how they measure the eye prior to the application of the laser light.

With traditional lasik, the eye is measured and tested for abnormalities with the same procedure as that of eye measurement for eyeglasses and contacts. Whereas with wavefront lasik, a light is used to create a 3D map of the eye and corneal irregularities. This data will be analyzed and will be used as a guide for the next procedure which is the laser treatment itself.

Traditional lasik eye surgery can treat common eye problems such as nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism. Wavefront lasik is a more sophisticated and powerful technique which can treat more severe eye problems and can even treat the complications brought about by traditional lasik.

Wavefront lasik, in using 3D map of the whole eye structure and using this map as a guide is more accurate procedure than the traditional lasik.