“Now, we can treat very high levels of nearsightedness, high levels of astigmatism, and even farsightedness. It really has opened the doors of refractive surgery for many patients.”

Today, for appropriate patients, the latest ophthalmic laser advancement is called “Custom LASIK.” Through this technique, ophthalmologists can prepare an individualized treatment for a person’s eye and his or her unique prescription.

“Not only are we treating things like nearsightedness, farsightedness, or astigmatism, but we’re treating other optical imperfections in patients’ eyes, which, in many cases, allows people to see better than they did before with their glasses or contact lenses,”  Brown said.

Custom LASIK has been around for approximately two years, Brown said.

“In the old days, we used to program the laser with the patient’s prescription,” Brown said. Now, we use a very complicated machine that not only measures the patient’s prescription as far as nearsightedness, farsightedness or astigmatism, but also the whole complex measurement of imperfections in the patient’s eyes.

“In the Custom procedure, the laser is programmed to achieve an ideal result, which has allowed us to treat a wider range of prescriptions than we have ever been able to treat before and it has improved the patient’s quality of vision, especially when it comes to night vision.”

Today, lasers have sophisticated tracking systems that follow any eye movements during eye procedures.

“When we first started doing eye surgeries, if the patient had a hard time holding his/her eye still, it made the surgery much more challenging,” Brown said. “Nowadays, with the sophisticated tracking systems, it’s not nearly the concern it was because even if the eye is moving around, the laser follows the eye movement. So it has really become a lot safer and more predictable over the last few years.”

Good candidates for LASIK include people who have healthy eyes and desire less dependence on glasses or contact lenses.

“There is an upper limit to what kind of prescription we can treat, so when people come in for screenings, we measure their prescription, we look at the curvature of their corneas, the thickness of their corneas, to make sure they are a good candidate,” Brown said. “Not everyone is a good candidate for LASIK, particularly those who have eye diseases such as glaucoma or cataracts.”

New ophthalmic technologies on the horizon involve implants that are used after certain eye procedures, such as cataract surgery.

“For those patients who are not good candidates for LASIK because of the kind of prescription they have or because of cataract formation, the nice thing is that we can offer them an option that is better for them,” Brown said.

“It really is an exciting time in ophthalmology. Even in the last three to five years, there has been a host of procedures and technologies that have come about and I believe we will see more and more of those over the next five to 10 years as well,” he said.

Source: Toledo Free Press