Archive for the ‘Lasik Eye Surgery’ Category

For the over one million Americans who have undergone LASIK eye surgery since it was first introduced commercially in 1991, the results have been more than just fulfilling. It has eased them from the baggage of those ugly glasses on their face, and also from the discomfort of wearing contact lenses. This technology has been known since forties, and advance improvements have always been on the upswing side.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Adding topical cyclosporine A to the standard postoperative treatment regimen may help speed visual recovery and improve final vision in patients undergoing LASIK, according to a retrospective study by California researchers.

“Recent studies have indicated that the status of the ocular surface and tear film before LASIK can impact surgical outcomes in terms of potential complications during and after surgery, refractive outcome, optical quality, patient satisfaction, and the severity and duration of dry eye after LASIK,” the study authors said.

“Topical cyclosporine A 0.05% (Restasis, Allergan) has been shown to increase tear production and improve the quality of naturally produced tears,” they said.

Roxana Ursea, MD, and colleagues investigated visual recovery times in 85 LASIK-treated eyes with no pre-existing dry eye. Specifically, 49 eyes received 0.05% topical cyclosporine A in addition to the standard postoperative drop regimen. These eyes were compared with a control group of 36 eyes that received the standard postop regimen alone.
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At 1 week postop, 44.9% of eyes treated with cyclosporine achieved a visual acuity of 20/15 compared with 22.2% of control eyes, according to the study.

In addition, at 1 month follow-up, 75.5% of eyes in the cyclosporine-treated group and 63.9% of control eyes achieved a visual acuity of 20/20 or better. By 3 months, 81.6% of cyclosporine-treated eyes and 69.4% of control eyes achieved 20/20 or better vision.

Cumulatively, 73.5% of eyes treated with cyclosporine achieved 20/20 or better vision compared with 66.7% of eyes in the control group, the authors reported.

“Prospective, controlled clinical studies are required to adequately determine long-term efficacy of cyclosporine in optimizing visual acuity in post-LASIK patients,” the authors said.

The study is published online ahead of print on the Web site for Journal of Refractive Surgery.

Popularity: 15% [?]

RALEIGH, N.C. –Millions of Americans have undergone laser eye surgery to correct bad vision, and along with the procedure’s popularity something else is coming into focus: its hazards.

Advertising stresses the surgery’s safety, and most procedures are successful. Tiger Woods, who relies on keen eyesight as the world’s best golfer, pitches it as a quick and painless way to restore sharp vision. Even the U.S. Air Force, long skeptical of the surgery, changed its policy last May to let people who had LASIK apply for pilot training.

But every year thousands of Americans who undergo LASIK are left with chronic pain, dryness of the eyes, distorted night vision and even blindness, according to Food and Drug Administration statistics.

LASIK, which stands for laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis, uses lasers to cut and reshape the cornea. It can improve eyesight without complications, but equipment flaws, a surgeon’s error or a failure to screen out patients whose eyes are ill-suited for the treatment can cause the operation to go awry.

The American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery, which represents about 9,000 ophthalmologists specializing in laser eye surgery, estimates that only 2 percent to 3 percent of the more than 1 million LASIK surgeries each year are unsuccessful. But FDA records of clinical studies show that six months after the surgery, up to 28 percent of patients complained of eye dryness, up to 16 percent had blurry vision and up to 18 percent had difficulty driving at night.

The Triangle, home to two medical schools, is a hot spot for LASIK, where 11 eye centers will perform LASIK on about 8,000 patients this year, according to market research.

One of the leaders is Duke Eye Center, whose LASIK surgeons are among the best-trained and best-equipped in the field. But even surgery at Duke’s level has damaged a few patients’ eyes beyond repair.

One of those patients is Matthew Kotsovolos, 38, of Raleigh. He had more reason than most patients to feel confident about undergoing LASIK. He was the Duke Eye Center’s head of finances. As an employee, he said, he was promised “red carpet treatment” and the procedure would be free.

The surgery June 8, 2006, gave him 20-20 vision, but it left him with intensely dry eyes and excruciating facial pain. He wakes up with sore eyes every morning, puts on special goggles to preserve eye moisture and wonders when the pain in his face will start to kick in.

“I traded in my glasses for permanent head pain, eye pain and these things,” Kotsovolos said, pointing to the goggles.

Nine months after his surgery, Kotsovolos quit his job at the Duke Eye Center, took a 25 percent pay cut and started work as business manager in the Duke University Medical Center’s gastroenterology division. He is organizing a support group for LASIK patients with complications.

“It may help inform people that this is a surgery with real risks that are understated by LASIK surgeons,” Kotsovolos said.

How many LASIK patients develop post-surgery complications is obscured by a lack of regulation and reporting. Because health insurers don’t pay for LASIK, they generally don’t track complications. The Food and Drug Administration doesn’t require reports from doctors, and regulatory enforcement has been largely limited to recalling malfunctioning lasers.

Evidence of problems is accumulating. Some of the strongest is the growing market for contact lenses designed for people who have undergone LASIK and still have vision problems, some seeing worse than before the surgery. One of the leading post-LASIK lens makers is MedLens Innovations, a Front Royal, Va., company founded in 2000.

Robert Breece, an optometrist and MedLens’ president, said his company provides hard contacts to more than 2,500 post-LASIK patients annually and business is increasing about 10 percent every year. Breece said his company serves more than 200 people per year who have been seriously disabled by the surgery.

“I don’t get to talk to happy LASIK patients,” he said.

By the end of the year, SynergEyes of Carlsbad, Calif., plans to bring to market the first line of contact lenses designed specially for laser eye surgery patients with complications who cannot tolerate hard lenses.

Patients with complications are starting to fight back on the Internet and through support groups. Medical research in the past three years has come up with insights about LASIK worrisome enough that some eye surgeons have begun to ease away from the procedure.

“We’ve learned the limitations of LASIK,” said Dr. Stephen Pflugfelder, professor of ophthalmology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.

An expert in laser eye surgery for more than 15 years, Pflugfelder is increasingly falling back on an older, less invasive procedure known as photorefractive keratectomy, or PRK, which involves only the surface of the eye.

In the past three years, the number of LASIK procedures at Baylor has dropped from about 70 percent to about 50 percent of all laser eye surgeries.

At Duke, LASIK makes up about 80 percent of all laser eye surgeries. Dr. Alan Carlson, head of the Duke Eye Center, is comfortable with that.

“Dry eye hasn’t been a big problem,” Carlson said.

The university buys the most sophisticated lasers on the market, he said. Patients are screened for risk factors and informed of what they can and cannot expect from LASIK. A surgeon might even do LASIK on one eye at a time.

Those precautions did not prevent Lauranell Burch, a former Duke medical researcher, from suffering serious complications after undergoing LASIK at the Duke Eye Center.

Burch, 47, said that since the surgery March 31, 2004, her eyes sting and burn all the time, eye tissue is wrinkled like a Ruffles potato chip and her night vision is distorted.

“(The damage) is noticeable and on the front of your mind all your waking hours,” Burch said. “There’s no escape.”

Burch cut short her follow-up treatment at Duke, became an avid patients’ advocate and started to take on LASIK surgeons on Internet Web sites.

Federal privacy laws prohibit Carlson from speaking about an individual patient’s case. But the head of the Duke Eye Center acknowledged that LASIK can cause serious complications.

“It’s imperfect surgery in an imperfect world,” he said.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Toronto  
Herzig Eye Institute Offers Baby Boomers Custom Solutions. Industry Leaders Introduce Innovative NearVision CK Procedure.

A natural part of aging, people over the age of 40 begin to develop presbyopia and they start to have difficulty reading a menu, newspaper, computer, and other close-up objects. Until recently, reading glasses, bifocals, or multifocal lenses were the only solutions. On the cutting edge of technology, the Herzig Eye Institute offers baby boomers a number of effective alternatives and more permanent options for the treatment of presbyopia, including the innovative new NearVision CK, Monovision LASIK, the Refractive Lens Exchange and the Implantable Contact Lens (ICL).

“Presbyopia affects everyone over 40, whether they have had perfect vision all their life or have undergone laser eye surgery to achieve perfect vision,” states Dr. Sheldon Herzig, Medical Director, Herzig Eye Institute. “As the body ages, the natural lens of the eye loses part of its elasticity and presbyopia, the loss of reading vision, begins to develop. At the Herzig Eye Institute there are a number of options for patients to correct presbyopia. We consult with each patient to determine the best option for them.”

Introducing NearVision CK

Leading pioneers in vision correction, the Herzig Eye Institute introduces the innovative new NearVision CK procedure for the treatment of presbyopia.

“For patients over 45 who have good distance vision in both eyes either naturally or as a result of previous laser surgery or cataract extraction, we have introduced a new procedure called NearVision CK,” says Dr. Herzig.

NearVision CK is a non-laser, no incision, and no tissue removal radio frequency (RF) energy that reshapes the cornea to adjust its refractive attributes to bring near vision back into focus. A small pen shaped instrument with a Keroplast Tip that emits controlled RF is inserted around the cornea in a circular pattern that shrinks collagen and makes the cornea steeper. Studies show that the depth of shrinkage determines the degree of corneal correction. The circular treatment tightens the cornea, increasing its curvature, thereby giving better near vision.

The best candidates for NearVision CK are:
45 years or older
See well at distance (without glasses or contacts)
Are tired of wearing reading glasses or magnifiers for all near vision tasks
Post LASIK patients that had LASIK over one year ago
Post cataract patients that want less dependence on reading glasses

When 58 year-old Toronto-based actor and roofer David Baughn heard about NearVision CK he decided that it might be the solution he was looking for. After consulting with Dr. Herzig and discovering that he was a candidate for the procedure, he recently underwent NearVision CK at the Herzig Eye Institute.

“I had perfect vision when I was younger and heard there was a new procedure that could allow me to get rid of my reading glasses,” states David Baughn. “NearVision CK was quick and painless. Now when I am in an audition and am given a script, I no longer have to go hunting for my glasses.”

Plumber Henry Kay, 59, underwent NearVision CK as a follow-up to the LASIK procedure he had 7 years ago.

“I knew I would still need reading glasses after I had my initial LASIK eye surgery, but I was sick of wearing them,” states Kay. “I was amazed at how fast a procedure NearVision CK was and that it was totally pain free. Within minutes I was reading fine print on prescription bottles.”

NearVision CK is typically performed on just one eye. It is a safe, fast, and an in-office treatment that is painless. Any discomfort subsides within 24 hours of the procedure and most people can return to work the next day. Patients will experience immediate improvement in vision after the procedure but the eye usually only adjusts to the final level of reading vision after several weeks.

NearVision CK is a temporary solution, as Presbyopia is a progressive condition and only the patient’s current needs can be treated with the procedure. Every patient is different and additional needs will increase as the eyes continue to age and more treatment may be required. NearVision CK can be performed up to three times on most patients with results lasting for one to three years.

Monovision LASIK

Traditional LASIK surgery frees the majority of patients from the need to wear glasses or contacts until they reach about forty and presbyopia sets in.  Monovision LASIK adjusts one eye to see things close up, while the other eye sees things farther away. The brain integrates the visual information from both eyes and adjusts either immediately or within a few weeks to having each eye focus at a different distance.

Refractive Lens Exchange (Clear Lens Extraction)

Used for patients with very high levels of nearsightedness, farsightedness and early lens opacities, Refractive Lens Exchange is the same procedure as modern cataract surgery, but can be performed before a cataract is detected.

Unlike laser vision correction, which alters the shape of the cornea, Refractive Lens Exchange changes the focusing power of the eye by removing the eye’s natural lens and replacing it with a better lens. In effect, the lens implant acts like a permanent contact lens within the eye, with newer lens designs offering both distance and reading vision.

At the beginning of the surgery, a small incision — less than an eighth of an inch, or 2.75 mm — is made in the periphery of the cornea. A delicate instrument is inserted through the incision to create a circular opening in the front of the lens capsule. A suction tip is then inserted, and the gel-like natural lens is removed and a lens implant is inserted into the lens capsule.

The Implantable Contact Lens (ICL™)

The Implantable Contact Lens is used for patients who are at least 18 years of age with high levels of myopia, hyperopia, or astigmatism that are too extreme for laser vision correction, and for whom laser vision correction on the cornea is not safe.

The ICL™ is a very thin intraocular lens that is inserted through a small 3 mm incision at the edge of the cornea. Unlike Refractive Lens Exchange, where an intraocular lens replaces the eye’s natural lens, the ICL™ is designed to rest in front of the eye’s natural lens, just behind the iris. The surgery typically takes 10 to 15 minutes to perform, with only one eye being treated at a time. The second eye is usually treated 1-7 days after the first eye.

About the Herzig Eye Institute

The Herzig Eye Institute has treated thousands of patients from across Canada, 42 US states and 23 countries worldwide. Dr. Herzig, a world-renowned expert in his field, is past president of the Canadian Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons and prepared the Recommended Safety Guidelines for Laser Refractive Centres in Canada. Herzig Eye Institute’s High Definition Vision ™ solutions utilize only the most advanced vision correction technology such as VISX Custom Vue ™ Wavefront-guided laser with Iris Registration technology, and Intralase® as well as other proven intraocular surgical procedures for patients who do not qualify for laser surgery. The Herzig Eye Institute also offers treatments for presbyopia including NearVision CK, Monovision LASIK, the Refractive Lens Exchange, the Implantable Contact Lens (ICL), as well as providing Advanced Cataract Solutions. The Herzig Eye Institute is the only custom vision correction surgical centre in North America to be awarded the prestigious ISO 9001 certification by SGS International Certification Services, Inc.

Contact:

Peter Ashworth/Ashley Lloyd
Ashworth Associates Inc.
ashworth.associates@sympatico.ca
416-603-6005

Popularity: 11% [?]

NEW ORLEANS, Nov. 12 /PRNewswire/ — A new study being presented at the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s 2007 Annual Meeting suggests that the laser surgery can help improve and possibly stabilize the vision of patients who have radial keratomy (RK) while preventing previously common side effects from the surgery.

In the study, 22 patients who had previously undergone RK and subsequently developed unanticipated changes in prescriptions for correcting vision underwent advanced surface ablation with miomycin C, an anti-scarring medication. Most patients experienced a significant improvement in corrected and uncorrected vision without any complications.

“This gives new hope to patients who have had RK and have developed problems,” said Navaneet Borisuth, MD, Ph.D., the presenting author of the poster. “Most refractive surgeons would shy away from these patients because we were not able to deliver the results that they expected. Now, with this refinement, we can deliver a very good quality of vision for our RK patients.”

Before the advent of laser surgery, RK was the predominant method of surgically correcting nearsightedness in patients. The procedure involved a surgeon making small incisions in the cornea, thus relaxing it and flattening it, which in turn corrected myopia. However, some patients developed farsightedness, or hyperopia, as scarring around the incisions caused the cornea to tighten and further change its shape. Efforts to correct this problem with laser technologies, such as photorefractive keratectomy (PRK) or LASIK, were fraught with complications and were often unsuccessful.

“The problem with PRK was patients would develop haze, which is a type of scarring response on the cornea and which could result in worse vision than the vision that the patient started out with,” said Dr. Borisuth.

Dr. Borisuth and co-author Prem Virdi, MD, treated 16 patients with LASEK and 6 with EpiLASIK for refractive error. The patients had had as many as 16 incisions made on the cornea with RK. After the most recent treatment, the doctors applied mitomycin C for 12 seconds and then assessed the results.

“Basically, all the patients had a significant improvement in uncorrected vision, and in terms of corrected vision, 95.5 percent of the patients were within one diopter of what we were aiming for,” Dr. Borisuth said. “No patient had vision worse than 20/25.” One patient did experience haze as a complication from EpiLASIK.

Further long-term studies are necessary to confirm the benefits of the approach. Nonetheless, the study suggests that RK patients may have surgical options that they previously did not. “These refinements do represent a safe way of treating refractive error in patients after RK,” Dr. Borisuth said.

About the American Academy of Ophthalmology

The American Academy of Ophthalmology is the world’s largest association of eye physicians and surgeons — Eye M.D.s — with more than 27,000 members worldwide. Eye health care is provided by the three “O’s” — opticians, optometrists and ophthalmologists. It is the ophthalmologist, or Eye M.D., who can treat it all: eye diseases and injuries, and perform eye surgery. To find an Eye M.D. in your area, visit the Academy’s Web site at www.aao.org.

Website: http://www.aao.org//

Popularity: 11% [?]

Lasik is abbreviation of Laser Assisted in situ Keratomileusis, used to cure problems like astigmatism, hyperopia and myopia and is performed by ophthalmologists and is a type of a retractive laser eye surgery. This lasik laser eye treatment has been extensively used by surgeons as this process makes the patient feel comparatively less pain and is also able to recover much faster than by following the normal procedure of surgery.

Popularity: 8% [?]

One such area where technology has absolutely made our lives better is with our eyes and vision. At the forefront of that is lasik surgery. It’s meant the end, for millions of Americans now, of having to struggle with glasses and contacts; and not only Americans but people all over the world - over 87 different countries to be more precise.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Time has come to get rid of inconvenient, costly contact lenses and spectacles. No need to worry, when technology is at your rescue. Just get your vision corrected using LASIK!

Popularity: 4% [?]

The combination of a highly advanced laser technology, using a laser that provides the doctor and the patient the highest level of safety, accuracy and reliability in LASIK along with the surgeon’s expertise, performed under International protocols and with International standards of hygiene is what achieves excellent results!

Popularity: 11% [?]

LASIK is the acronym for L aser- A ssisted in Si tu K eratomileusis, a type of refractive laser eye surgery performed by ophthalmologists for correcting myopia, hyperopia, and astigmatism. The procedure is generally preferred to photorefractive keratectomy, PRK, (also called ASA, Advanced Surface Ablation) because it requires less time

Popularity: 4% [?]