Cool New Eye Surgery Procedure

I am watching a documentary on PBS about a brand new corrective eye surgery. It is called wavefront custom-guided corneal ablation.

They said it is so much better than LASIK surgery that within seven years they predict that even people with 20/20 vision will be getting this surgery to get 20/10 vision! They used the term “super-normal vision”.

A computer shines a light into your eye and then analyzes the light that bounces back out of your eye. From reading this wavefront, the computer creates an exact map of all the little bumps and contours of your eye.

This map is then fed into a computer that controls an extremely accurate excimer laser. It uses the custom map to make thousands of little corrections all over your lens resulting in a near perfect eyeball. Less tissue needs to be vaporized with the laser than with LASIK, and I think they said they do not have to shave a flap of the lens off, so there is no chance of the flap being dislodged, and less chance of infection, and generally a safer procedure. The recovery time is also faster.

An analogy was that LASIK is like using a paint roller to paint a wall, and the custom procedure is like using a little artists paintbrush to paint the wall.

It is still going through the final stages of FDA testing and approval, but all of the results have been very good.

How exciting! I am definitely interested in this.