Do you want to stop depending on glasses and contact lenses to see? Are you ready for clearer vision than ever before?
LASIK is an excellent choice if you’re considering a vision correction procedure. It’s the most popular vision correction procedure you can undergo, and for good reason.
LASIK has a 95% patient satisfaction rate and is a low-risk, reliable procedure. If you’re considering an alternative to glasses and contact lenses, you should keep LASIK top of mind.
Although LASIK is a state-of-the-art procedure, not all LASIK procedures are the same. But if you want the best of the best, the answer is a custom LASIK procedure.
With custom LASIK, you’ll achieve better results than traditional LASIK procedures. Custom LASIK corrects your vision to a higher degree than conventional LASIK is capable of. Keep reading to learn more about LASIK and the advantages of a laser vision procedure like custom LASIK!
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How Does LASIK Work?
LASIK is a refractive laser eye procedure that changes the shape of your cornea to correct refractive errors. These include nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism.
LASIK is performed on the cornea, which is the clear part of the eye. The cornea bends light passing through your eye to hit your retina at the correct focal point. When light bends in your eye, it’s called refraction.
If the cornea is misshapen because of a refractive error, light cannot hit the retina at its focal point. Because of this, you’ll experience blurry vision at certain distances. If you have astigmatism, you’ll have blurry vision at all distances, no matter what you’re looking at.
LASIK reshapes your cornea, which corrects any refractive errors and improves your ability to see clearly. The procedure achieves this by first creating a flap in the cornea with a femtosecond laser.
After making the flap, it’s lifted, and then an excimer laser is used to remove a precise and predetermined amount of corneal tissue under the flap. Afterward, the flap is replaced and placed back down to act as a natural bandage while your eye heals. There are no sutures or stitches used during LASIK because of this.
Traditional LASIK vs. Custom LASIK
Traditional LASIK and custom LASIK are procedures that are similar to each other, but there are some significant differences between the two. The biggest difference is that custom LASIK is a completely bladeless procedure.
There are no blades used during custom LASIK at all. Any corneal reshaping and removal of corneal tissue is done using either a femtosecond laser or an excimer laser.
The corneal flap created during custom LASIK is done with a femtosecond laser, while if you have a more traditional LASIK procedure performed, this may be with a blade. Using a laser to create the flap allows for more precision.
It also means that the flap can be thinner. However, most practices use a femtosecond laser for all LASIK procedures, custom or otherwise. But custom LASIK still holds many advantages over traditional LASIK due to one key difference: wavescan technology.
Wavescan, or wavefront, is a technology that creates a highly detailed topographical map of the eye. This detailed map can precisely measure your specific refractive error.
The excimer laser is programmed with the map to remove the right corneal tissue at the necessary places. Wavescan technology gives custom LASIK much greater surgical precision than traditional LASIK, so much so that the degree of accuracy is measurable.
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What Sets Custom LASIK Apart
Traditional LASIK can correct your vision to a very high degree. Most patients end up with 20/20 vision or better.
But the excimer laser used for traditional LASIK procedures can only correct your vision to the nearest .25 diopters. On the other hand, custom LASIK can correct your sight to the nearest .01 diopters. Custom LASIK is up to 25 times more accurate than regular LASIK!
But what exactly does more precision and accuracy mean for your vision? Several advantages come with the high surgical precision of Wavescan technology and custom LASIK.
The Advantages of Custom LASIK
First and foremost, custom LASIK can help you achieve better vision than traditional LASIK. Remember that around 96% of regular LASIK patients achieve 20/20 vision or better.
Custom LASIK patients have a higher chance of achieving 20/20 vision or better! Better accuracy also means the complication rate of custom LASIK is even lower than that of traditional LASIK.
Fewer patients experience post-surgical visual aberrations. Because of this, some patients who otherwise wouldn’t make good LASIK candidates can still have custom LASIK.
If you have large pupils, you can experience visual aberrations and other issues with night vision if you have LASIK. Therefore, patients with pupils above a specific size usually won’t qualify for traditional LASIK procedures.
However, these patients may be qualified candidates for custom LASIK instead. The added precision of custom LASIK means even patients with large pupils can safely have LASIK with a much lower risk for visual aberrations.
Although traditional LASIK and custom LASIK are both permanent, your vision may change over time and may not be as sharp if you choose a conventional LASIK procedure. Both regular LASIK and custom LASIK are permanent and completely change your vision for life, giving you total freedom from visual aids.
But your vision can change a little over the years and decades, making your sharp, crisp vision a little less crisp as the years go by. The precision of custom LASIK means that crispness lasts longer, giving you better vision for longer.
Choosing custom LASIK is the way to go if you want the best. Ready to change your life and your vision?
Find out if you could be a good custom LASIK candidate by requesting your LASIK consultation at See Clearly Vision in McLean and Arlington, VA, today! Haven’t you waited long enough for the eyesight of your dreams?
