Lasik Surgery In Mumbai
Laser Eye Surgery Procedure & Lasik Surgeon
Laser-assisted in situ keratomileuses or LASIK for short is a type of refractive surgery that aims at correcting vision-related problems. Since it uses a laser beam for treatment, it is also referred to as ‘laser eye surgery’ or ‘laser vision correction’. It is performed with the help of an excimer laser and a tool called microkeratome that reshapes the eye’s cornea to improve visual accuracy.
Every LASIK surgery is highly customizable with the help of wavefront-guided laser, which allows the eye surgeon to measure and correct more complex aberrations. Wavefront-guided laser, slit-scanning laser, and spot-scanning laser are commonly used during LASIK treatment for performing different alterations to the cornea.
What is LASIK?
The type of laser to be used is decided based on two factors; the size of the patient’s pupils and the size of the treatment zone. Excimer lasers also use an automated eye-tracking system that monitors the movement of the eye to ensure the laser beam stays on target during the procedure and reduces the complications that may arise later.
Why Is LASIK surgery performed?
There are three underlying problems that occur in the cornea:
When your eyeball is slightly elongated horizontally, curving the cornea too sharply, the light rays focus correctly on the front of the retina but get blurred for distant vision. Hence, closer objects appear clearly, but far away objects are blurred,
When you have a horizontally squished eyeball or a cornea that is too flat, the incoming light focuses directly behind the retina instead of on it. Hence, objects closer to the eyes appear blurred while far away objects may be clear or blurred too,
When the cornea is curved or flattened unevenly over the eye, the result is astigmatism, which disrupts the focus of both near and distant light, causing a general blurriness in the vision.
LASIK treatment is used to cure these corneal deformities to rectify your vision and eliminate the necessity of lens and glasses.
How Is LASIK surgery performed?
Before the procedure, the state of your eye’s anatomy and vision are measured in high definition detail during the preoperative evaluation. That data is used to program the laser system by the surgeon into the LASIK platform to customize the treatment plan for achieving optimal results.
The goal of LASIK surgery in Mumbai is to reshape the cornea such that the incident light precisely focuses on the retina without refracting anywhere else.
The eye to be treated will be numbed with anaesthetic eye drops to relax its movements, and it will be accurately positioned under the laser system.
Once the eye is positioned, the laser treatment is initiated and executed in three stages:
First, the surgeon makes water-soluble markings over the cornea retina. These markings act as reference points for accurately repositioning the retinal surface after the surgery.
With the help of a mechanical tool called ‘Microkeratome’ which is a precision instrument with an oscillating blade, a thin circular cut is made over the corneal surface, and it is partially opened and folded back to create a hinged flap. This flap can also be created with a ‘femtosecond laser’ which is a more painless treatment than the above.
This hinged flap allows access to the underlying corneal tissues called Stroma which is to be altered.
A computer-controlled excimer laser which uses a cool ultraviolet light beam is targeted over the stroma tissues, and they are removed from the retina in microscopic amounts.
This way, the laser manipulates the shape of the retina in such a way that it aligns with the optical system, and the incident light is precisely focused.
The retinal reshaping process takes about a minute to complete.
After the laser treatment, the folded flap of the corneal surface is drawn ahead for closing up the retina.
Now, referring to the water-soluble marking made before the incision, the flap is repositioned over the retina.
No sutures are required to reattach the flap as it naturally heals itself.
What are the types of LASIK surgery?
Every type of LASIK surgery differs by the kind of laser it uses and the way it creates the corneal lid, i.e. the corneal flap. However, the following are the most popular types of LASIK treatments performed today:
Also known as Bladeless LASIK surgery, it is a safer and painless version that doesn’t use a microkeratome to create a flap. Instead, it uses the femtosecond laser.
During flap creation, the femtosecond laser discharges equal amounts of energy at a precisely defined depth creating a chain of tiny bubbles over a thin corneal lamella, i.e. corneal layer.
The surgeon is able to cut through the tissue bridges formed by the bubbles and create a hinged flap that is much thinner than what is created using a microkeratome.
The most significant advantage of this technique is that it can be redone immediately in case the cut is misshaped in the first attempt as the cornea absorbs the gas bladders created by the Femto-laser. Hence, the risk of miss-cuts is eliminated.
The rest of the procedure is performed in the traditional way where the cornea is corrected using an excimer laser.
Femto-LASIK surgery corrects vision impairments more accurately than the traditional LASIK surgery.
Although people often confuse it as a type of LASIK surgery and call it as ‘SMILE LASIK surgery’, in reality, it is a separate laser eye surgery procedure which is partially similar to LASIK treatment.
SMILE is a one-step procedure that uses a single laser throughout and is less invasive than LASIK.
It is the latest advancement in laser vision correction treatments which extracts a small portion of the stroma to cure nearsightedness.
Here, a femtosecond laser creates a series of tiny bubbles below the stroma layer and above the stroma layer respectively, creating tiny keyhole access to the cornea.
With the same femtosecond laser, a small piece of corneal tissue, known as ‘lenticule’ is extracted from the cornea.
The keyhole incision heals by itself without sutures or patches within a few days.
SMILE laser eye surgery can rectify up to -10.00 diopters (D) of nearsightedness.
SMILE laser eye surgery is performed using a femtosecond laser.
What should I expect after the LASIK surgery?
- In most cases, the vision starts becoming clearer from the next day itself.
- You might feel some burning and itching sensations for some time after the surgery, which is natural. The vision usually feels a bit hazy or blurry for some time after the treatment, but that effect goes away after some time.
- It is recommended that you rest for a couple of days before jumping back to your routine.
- During your follow-up appointments for the next few months, your eye will be checked with some focus tests. It is better to attend all these appointments to prevent any unforeseen complications.
- Most people regain their sharp vision after the treatment. However, you may be asked to wear low-power glasses to nullify minor refractive errors.
- Prescription lenses with anti-reflective coating are often helpful in curing mild residual refractive error after LASIK as they provide a sharp vision for specific activities like driving at night.
- Ask your eye doctor for glasses with photochromic lenses if you feel sensitivity towards sunlight after the surgery.
- In the rarest of cases, you may require a secondary LASIK procedure called “touch up” treatment after a few months of the surgery to rectify residual refractive errors and achieve acceptable visual acuity. It is now much easier and affordable to get such laser eye surgery in Mumbai.
What Are the Benefits Of LASIK eye surgery?
The primary benefit of LASIK surgery is that it eliminates your dependency on optical lens and glasses and makes your vision much sharper. Apart from this fact, the following are other benefits to having LASIK laser treatment for your eyes:
- It was found that around 96% of the patients who undergo LASIK surgery achieve their desired results without any need for secondary surgery. With its higher success rate and affordability, LASIK is being recommended extensively by every eye surgeon in Mumbai who provides this treatment.
- Being a laser operated treatment, it does not involve any form of incisions or injections, which makes it faster to perform and recover from.
- The results of the surgery start to reflect in less than a couple of days or at most a week.
This one-time surgery helps you save all the money you would have had to spend on traditional eyewear in the future as the clear vision stays almost forever. - The best part of LASIK is that it can be revamped by secondary ‘touch-up’ surgery without any adverse effects.
- You can resume your daily activities like showering from the very next day as there are no wounds or sutures to heal.
- After the surgery, the sharp natural field of vision resets, and a lot of patients experience an extra clear peripheral vision and dramatic improvement in their night vision too.
LASIK surgery was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1999 and has been around for more than 20 years.
The high success rate of 96% is due to the extremely low risk of complications associated with the laser used.
Today, there are more than 7,000 peer-reviewed published studies that look into all important aspects of LASIK and confirm that this procedure is both safe and effective as well as.
Based on this research, the rate of complications from LASIK eye surgery is estimated to be less than 1%, which makes it one of the safest elective surgical procedures available today.
A recent analysis of studies that compared the possibility of infections via contact lens use verses the LASIK surgery found that the chances of infections like microbial keratitis after using soft contact lenses for a year are three times more than that with LASIK.
Although LASIK surgery can be performed on anyone who is above the age of 18, there are several reasons why even the best LASIK surgeon in Mumbai will disapprove you as a candidate for this surgery. This surgery is mostly not recommended if you have:
- A family history of eye disorders
- Generally normal vision
- critical nearsightedness
- Larger pupils or thinned corneas
- Hormonal or age-related changes in the eyesight
- An athletic hobby or a job where you may injure your eyes or face.
- Autoimmune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis
- A weak immune system
- Dry eyes for a long time
- Any of the various eye problems such as an Inflamed cornea, eyelid injuries, or eye diseases such as uveitis, glaucoma or cataracts.
Every surgery is bound to have some mild complications, and so is the LASIK treatment. Following are some of these complications which either subside over time or are curable with a secondary surgery:
- This surgery causes a temporary decrease in tear production, making your eyes feel unusually dry as they heal and reducing the quality of your vision during the first six months.
- You might notice increased light sensitivity, glare, halos around bright lights or double vision for a few days to a few weeks.
- Under-corrections may be caused if the surgery fails is unable to remove sufficient tissues from your eye, causing your vision to be unclear again, and you may need to undergo another LASIK procedure within a year.
- On the other hand, overcorrections may be more challenging to fix than under-corrections.
- You may also have astigmatism caused by uneven tissue removal, which requires additional surgery, glasses or contact lenses.
- The flap creation stage may cause some infections or excess tears.
- During the healing period, the outermost corneal tissue layer may grow abnormally underneath the flap.
- In rare cases, your vision may gradually reduce back to your original prescription. This condition is known as Regression.
- In the rarest of cases, surgical complications can result in significant loss of vision.
Frequently Asked Questions:
No, there has never been a single case of blindness that was a direct result of LASIK eye surgery complications. The risk of going blind from a LASIK complication is comparable to the risk of blindness from wearing contacts.
The best LASIK surgeon in Santacruz, Mumbai performs this surgery as a quick outpatient procedure that takes around 15 minutes. The laser treatment itself takes less than a minute to treat one eye.
Health insurance companies usually don’t cover the cost of refractive or laser eye surgery, unless specific health-related criteria are met. As laser eye surgery is an elective treatment and not a medical necessity, many health insurance companies classify it as a cosmetic treatment which cannot be covered by insurance.
From the very next day of surgery, you’ll be able to see much clearer, and your eyes will almost be back to normal. Most people who have this treatment return to work the very next day. However, a couple of days of rest can be more beneficial. You can start driving after two or three days when your eyes feel healthy enough. You may resume wearing makeup in about a week.
The two factors that decide how well your surgery will turn out and how much should it cost are the type of laser technology used and the skill level of the surgeon. Hence, the cost for LASIK surgery in Santacruz, Mumbai varies from clinic to clinic .
How is Clear Vision Eye Centre better than other eye clinics?
If you’re undergoing LASIK eye surgery in Santacruz, Mumbai, you must know that the price of this treatment largely depends on the type of technology and devices being used and the experience of the eye surgeon. Clear Vision Eye Centre is an epitome of both these factors. Our head surgeon is the most adept and trusted eye surgeon who uses only the latest available technology and techniques to provide the best laser eye surgery in Mumbai. The Clear Vision website can help you understand everything about our treatments and services.