Laser eye surgery facts

Lasers have been used for eye surgery for over two decades, and the astounding medical advances over that period have led to affordable, precise surgery available for everybody.
 

How Do Lasers Work?

 
Instead of using a scalpel, surgeons use lasers to cut cleanly through tissue by using specific light wavelengths and pulse duration. Different types of laser are used for different procedures; for instance Laser Eye Surgery uses a shorter light wavelength. It’s used to sculpt the cornea to improve sight problems, usually myopia (short-sightedness), hypermetropia (long sightedness) and astigmatism (uneven curvature of the eye's surface).
 

How are Lasers used on the Eye?

 
The cornea is the transparent tissue that covers the front of the eye that helps to control focusing. In order to restore good eyesight, the cornea can be sculpted using a laser into a more ideal shape for clear vision.
 
A computer-controlled Excimer laser is used to remove microscopic amounts of tissue from the cornea. The aim is to restore normal eyesight, without the need for glasses or contact lenses.
 
The bladeless LASIK procedure involves taking a thin flap of corneal tissue, created with another laser known as a femtosecond laser, and lifts the flap out of the way. The most widely used one is known as the IntraLase.
 
The way the flap is made is through infrared laser energy that inserts a precise pattern of tiny, overlapping spaces just below the corneal surface. This femtosecond laser operates at extremely high speeds (pulses of one quadrillionth of a second). This allows the tissue to be targeted and actually divides it at a molecular level, without heat or impact to surrounding tissue.
 

Precision Control

 
The Excimer laser then reshapes the underlying tissue; it’s a ‘cool’ type of laser. It doesn’t burn tissue, but vaporises small amounts of the cornea every time a beam of the laser is pulsed onto the surface of the eye.
 
The diameter of the laser beam and the number of pulses that are directed onto the cornea are carefully controlled using computer technology, so that the surface of the cornea is reshaped.
 
The flap is then put back over the eye to cover the newly recontoured surface. Recovery is swift, and the entire procedure is totally pain- free.
 
Laser Eye Surgery is clean, sterile, precise and pain-free. For your free consultation, call Optilase on +353 1 223 8821