LASIK Surgery

Now, you have decided to undergo LASIK surgery and say good bye to glasses or contact lenses. You also have selected your LASIK surgeon base on the tips on choosing the right LASIK surgeon. So, what to do next?

Call your LASIK surgeon to arrange an appointment for pre-operative consultation and baseline evaluation (exam). Your doctor will not schedule the appointment in a short term after you call because you have to prepare yourself for the exam. If you are wearing contact lenses, you have to stop wearing them before your baseline evaluation and switch to wearing glasses full-time. You need to stop wearing soft contact lenses 2 weeks before your initial evaluation, but if you wear toric soft lenses or rigid gas permeable (RGP) lenses, you need to stop it at least 3 weeks before visiting your doctor for the exam and you must stop to wear hard lenses for at least 4 weeks before your initial evaluation. Contact lenses may alter the shape of your cornea and leaving your contacts means to let your cornea back to its natural shape. This will result in accurate measurements which determine how much corneal tissue to remove during the surgery. If you are wearing RGP or hard lenses, corneal measurements need to be repeated at least a week after your initial evaluation and before surgery, to make sure that your cornea shape has reached its natural shape and will not alter anymore.

On your baseline evaluation day, your doctor will examine your eyes. Just like a regular eye exam, the doctor will use instruments such as a refractor to determine your corrective glasses or contacts prescription, a slit lamp to examine the cornea, iris, lens and anterior chamber of your eyes and together with the ophthalmoscope to examine your retina. To examine the pressure inside your eyes, the doctor uses a tonometer. It helps to identify if you have a glaucoma or early sign of glaucoma. The next instrument is pupilometer which is used to measure the exact diameter of your pupil.
The last instrument used to examine your eyes is a corneal topographer to take photographs of your eyes and cornea. The result looks like a map of cornea and shows the irregularities of your cornea, steepness and flatness, which are going to be corrected with the refractive surgery later.

If you are going to undergo a wavefront-guided LASIK (also called Wavefront LASIK or Custom LASIK), the doctor will use a computerized device named wavefront aberrometer to collect the data of how your retina reflects the light. The data is projected in a 3-D map (wavefront map) and the measurements are 25 times more precise than any measurements used in conventional LASIK.

The doctor will ask you about your past and present overall medical and eye conditions and medications you are currently taking and medications that you may be allergic to. He or she will also examine whether you have dry eyes disease or the early sign of it, talk and explain about the risks, benefits and alternatives of LASIK surgery, and other questions that may qualify or disqualify you as a good LASIK candidate.

The overall evaluation will help the doctor determine your eye health and what vision correction you may need, maybe it is LASIK surgery or other refractive surgery, or maybe you are not suitable to undergo any vision surgery. It will also help to decide how much laser ablation is required for your eyes.

Of course you are allowed to discuss anything that have in your mind about the surgery, your worries, review any informational literature that you do not understand before you make a final decision to sign the informed consent form.