Tired of wearing glasses or contact lenses? Today, several surgical methods can correct your eyesight and give you the freedom of seeing well without corrective lenses.

By far, LASIK is currently the most popular vision-correcting or “refractive” surgery available. But there are other options as well. Here’s a brief summary of several refractive surgery options and how they compare to LASIK:

PRK

PRK (photorefractive keratectomy) was the first laser vision correction procedure approved in the United States, receiving FDA approval in 1995. It soon became a popular alternative to radial keratotomy (RK), which was the only viable surgical treatment for nearsightedness available at […]

LASIK, short for laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis, is the most popular refractive surgery available today. Each year, more than one million LASIK procedures are performed in the United States.

LASIK has become the premier surgery for vision correction because it’s quick and painless, there is little or no discomfort after the procedure and vision recovery is rapid – some patients already see 20/20 the following day.

LASIK can correct nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism. With a special technique called monovision, it can also reduce the need for reading glasses among patients over age 40 who wear bifocals.

Am I a good candidate for LASIK?

To […]

If you are considering LASIK and worried that something could go wrong, you might take comfort in knowing that it’s very rare for complications from this procedure to cause permanent, significant vision loss. Also, many complications can be resolved through laser re-treatment.

Selecting the right eye surgeon probably is the single most important step you can take to decrease any risks associated with LASIK. An experienced, reputable surgeon will make sure you are a good candidate for LASIK before a procedure is recommended. And if problems develop during or after the procedure, the surgeon should work closely with you to resolve […]

Laser eye surgery isn’t for everyone. Here are six guidelines to help you decide if LASIK is right for you:

• Are your eyes healthy? If you have any condition that can affect how your eyes respond to surgery or heal afterwards, wait until that condition is resolved. Examples include chronic dry eyes, conjunctivitis (“pink eye”) and any eye injury. Some conditions, such as cataracts, keratoconus and uncontrolled glaucoma, may disqualify you completely.

• Are you an adult? You need to be at least 18 years of age to have LASIK. (Younger patients can sometimes be treated as an exception. Discuss this with your […]

PRK (or photorefractive keratectomy) is a laser eye surgery that is very similar to LASIK. The primary difference between the two is that in PRK, no flap is created on the cornea prior to reshaping the eye with an excimer laser.

Though you may not be familiar with PRK, it has been around longer than LASIK and once was the most common laser vision correction procedure.

Like LASIK, PRK can correct a wide range of nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism, and many studies indicate PRK provides virtually the same long-term visual outcomes and success rates as LASIK.

Advantages of PRK

The primary advantage of PRK […]

Presbyopia is the normal age-related loss of near focusing ability. If you’re over 40 and have to move the newspaper farther away to read it, you are beginning to experience presbyopia.

Even if you’ve had your vision corrected with LASIK surgery in your 20s or 30s, you’ll still experience reading vision problems from presbyopia in your 40s, 50s and beyond.

When the time comes, most people deal with presbyopia by wearing reading glasses or eyeglasses with bifocal or progressive (“no-line bifocal”) lenses.  But if you want greater freedom from glasses after age 40, there are surgical options for the correction of presbyopia […]

Corneal inlays and onlays are small lenses or optical devices that can be inserted into the cornea to alter its shape and correct vision problems.

Though these devices and the surgical procedures associated with them are not yet FDA-approved for use in the United States, they are currently in clinical trials and may soon represent a new form of vision correction surgery.

In LASIK and PRK, vision correction is achieved by removing corneal tissue with a laser to reshape the eye. But with corneal inlays or onlays inserted just beneath the surface of the cornea, laser energy some day could be used […]

A corneal transplant – also called keratoplasty (KP), penetrating keratoplasty (PKP), or corneal graft – is the surgical removal of the central portion of the cornea (the normally clear front surface of the eye) followed by replacement with a donor “button” of clear corneal tissue from an eye bank.

Corneal transplants are performed when, because of disease or injury, the cornea becomes scarred or damaged in such a way that it causes vision problems that cannot be corrected with eyeglasses, contact lenses, or refractive surgery such as LASIK.

The National Eye Institute estimates that approximately 40,000 corneal transplants are performed each year […]