Archive for May 22nd, 2007

If you wear glasses or contacts then you have probably wondered what it would be like to see clearly on your own. You have probably also heard of Lasik surgery. Angie Henry is checking in for surgery. Surgery that will rid her of the glasses she has been wearing since the fourth grade. Henry takes the prescribed Valium and waits for her nerves to settle.

Angie’s first led back to a prep room. Once her eye area is disinfected, Henry enters the operating room to meet Dr. William Wiley.

Dr. William Wiley asks Angie if she can see the wall clock without her glass and without squinting; her reply is ‘No’.

With Henry in position, Dr. Wiley pops in a couple numbing drops and gets to work on her right eye. After the flap is cut in Angie’s other eye as well, Dr. Wiley begins correcting her sight.

The prescription is mapped out with extreme precision days before surgery with a computer and then transferred directly into the interlace machine. The laser is done in 30 seconds.

The procedure is repeated on Angie’s other eye. After a total of about 15 minutes, Angie is sitting up and checking out that wall clock once again.

Dr. William Wiley asked Angie to read the clock again, her reply this time, ‘Yes, it is 6:35′.

“I didn’t feel anything. I could just hear it! It was kind of moving around and it was over! It was not bad at all.”

After a few last minute instructions, Angie and her husband go home.

Dr. Wiley says the average patient pays between 1 and 2 thousand dollars per eye. And almost anyone can have it done as long as you have a stable prescription and a corneas that are thick enough to withstand the laser.

“Once you get Lasik, your sight is set for life.”

Dr. Wiley says there is a five-percent chance that some patients may need touch up surgery if they don’t heal as they’d hoped. With age, Lasik patients may eventually need reading glasses.

Source: 13ABC

Popularity: 7% [?]