Procedures

LASIK and PRK
VISX Advanced CustomVue Procedure
Refractive Lens Exchange
Monovision

Other Procedures Some of our patients who are very interested in having laser eye surgery to correct their vision may not qualify for excimer surgery. They may have early cataracts They may have extreme degrees of nearsightedness or farsightedness For these patients there is an excellent alternative in lens exchange surgery. As you know, there are two lenses in the eye. The first, the external lens, is the cornea. That is the lens we work on when we do excimer laser surgery, either Lasik or PRK.

The other lens is within the eye and exists behind the iris or colored part of the eye. When a patient develops a cataract it is this lens that becomes cloudy. If a patient has slight cataracts and has very good vision yet, we tend to recommend that the patient not have excimer laser surgery but to have the cataractous lens removed and replaced with another clear lens of an appropriate power to improve the vision.

The lens which is inserted is usually made of an acrylic or sometimes a plastic material. If there is a residual amount of nearsightedness or farsightedness then laser surgery can be done to correct the small residual refractive error.

Even if the lens in the eye is perfectly clear but the degree of nearsightedness or farsightedness is extreme, we recommend lens exchange surgery followed by excimer surgery to give the best possible type of vision as free as possible of night vision problems. It has been well documented that patients who have excimer surgery for extreme nearsightedness or farsightedness usually have severe night vision problems in the form of haloes or glare. To avoid this, the largest part of the correction is done by changing the power of he internal lens in an exchange, while the rest of the correction is done on the cornea.