Laser eye surgery comes in a sometimes confusing range of options, each with its own vision correction advantages and applications. While photorefractive keratectomy (PRK) and laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis (LASIK) have histories of longer than 30 years, laser epithelial keratomileusis (LASEK) is about eight years younger, first performed in 1996.
LASEK shares similarities with both PRK and LASIK, but in theory it presents the advantages of the older procedures while avoiding some of their potential complications.
At Advanced Lasik in the Midtown East, New York City, and Long Beach, and Duarte, California, ophthalmologist Randa Garrana, MD, and our team offer LASEK surgery along with several other laser procedures to provide vision correction options for as many patients as possible.
Let’s take a closer look at LASEK, so you have a better understanding of what it can do for you.
Laser-assisted vision correction surgery often seeks to reshape the cornea, a five-layered surface at the front of each eye. Up to 70% of the light entering your eyes is first refracted by the cornea before being finely focused through the internal lens.
Differences between the various laser approaches often come down to the shaping of the cornea. In PRK, the top layer of the cornea, the epithelium, is removed completely, though it regenerates after shaping the remainder of the cornea.
LASIK surgery forms a flap cut from the first three layers of the cornea with laser reshaping done on the bottom two layers. The thickness of the flap makes LASIK patients vulnerable to flap damage while healing.
LASEK also uses a flap technique, but it’s formed by a single layer of corneal tissue — or the surface epithelium that’s removed during PRK surgery.
The corneal epithelium heals quickly, so one of the main advantages of LASEK is that epithelial tissue no longer needs to completely regenerate as it does in the PRK process. Recovery from LASEK surgery is faster and less painful than PRK, gaining the advantages of the flap approach.
LASEK also improves upon the LASIK procedure by creating a flap from a single layer of corneal tissue. The epithelial flap heals more quickly than the multilayered flap created during LASIK, reducing some of the potential for flap damage that the thicker flap attracts.
Patients with thin corneas are sometimes ruled out from having LASIK because there simply isn’t enough tissue to create a suitable flap. The single layer epithelial flap heals within days, greatly reducing the chances of complications.
LASEK corrects the same refractive errors as other laser procedures, including astigmatism (irregularly shaped corneas), myopia (nearsightedness), and hyperopia (farsightedness).
Ready to learn more about LASEK? Contact Advanced Lasik to book a consultation with Dr. Garrana today. We have an East Coast office in Midtown East, New York City, and two West Coast offices in Duarte and Long Beach, California.
