 Am I a candidate for laser vision correction?
Please Answer the Following Questions to determine if you might be a LASIK Candidate.
- Do you have problems seeing things far and/or up close?
- Are you over 18 years of age?
- Has your vision been stable for the past two years or more?
- Is your general health in good condition?
- Are you free of any eye diseases? (keratoconus, glaucoma, cataracts and certain retinal and optic nerve diseases)
- Do you understand that LASIK is not 100% permanent?
- Do you understand that an in-depth examination of your eyes, your individual case, your expectations and your lifestyle will help our experienced doctors determine your candidacy?
- Have you been correctable to 20/20 vision or better with corrective lenses?
If you answered "yes" to theses eight questions, you could be a candidate for LASIK. Please contact us to schedule your free consultation. At your consultation, our experienced and friendly medical staff will pre-screen your eyes with different state of the art imaging machines that will determine your corneal thickness and shaping of the eyes. They will also look at your current eyeglass prescription or run an auto-refractor to determine if a refractive procedure will offer you any benefit. Corneal scan and in-depth examination of the health of the eye inner and outer is needed to better qualify a patient for the procedure and to highly reduce the risk of post LASIK complications.
 What are the risks and side effects of LASIK?
With any procedure there are always risks and side effects. Even the prescription drugs you take will have risks and side effects attached to it. Please keep in mind that this procedure is not permanent due to many factors such as slight change in vision due to health problems, pregnancy, prescription drugs and or lack of flexibility to the lens of the eyes causing patients to have some difficulty reading things up close. The risks and side effects will be discussed in accordance with eah patient's particular case at the consulation. However, some of the more common side effects experienced by patients are dry eye, haloing and glaring at night or "ghostings" of images, and light sensitivity. While our goal is to get you to your achieved visual acuity; some patients may be undercorrected and others overcorrected due to differences in healing time and reaction. Patients must allow two to three months for the vision to stabilize. At this time, your vision should be stable and the eyes should be 100% healed. Patients with large amount of correction may need an enhancement procedure to fine-tune your vision closer to the initial target. Patients who are over the age of 40 may need the help of reading glasses.
 What will it be like on the day of my procedure?
You will arrive at your scheduled time of arrival with your consent forms, eye drops and your driver. You will be at the center for about one to two hours at most. A patient counselor will go over your instructions and have your surgeon meet with you. Dr. Nguyen will give you anti-anxiety pills to relax you before your procedure. Once you are relaxed enough for the procedure we will direct you to our operating room to prep you for your procedure. Before starting the procedure, Anesthetic drops are applied to the eyes. During the LASIK procedure four steps are taken they are as follows:
- Create the flap with a microkeratome (blade) or with an Intralase FS laser (blade-less).
- Once the flap is created it is then gently lifted by the surgeon, revealing the inner corneal tissue.
- The VISX IR Excimer Laser will send Computer-controlled pulses of cool laser light to the inner layers of your cornea. The VISX IR Excimer Laser has a tracking devise that tracks your eyes faster than your eye can move. If your eyes move too far from the lasers tracker, the laser will automatically stop until your pupils are detected. As the laser reshapes the eyes it will make a ticking sound. The inner corneal layer is reshaped with the laser to mimic your contact lens or glasses prescription. You will smell something similar to burnt hair from a hair blow dryer.
- The surgeon will then place the flap down gently and align it back to it's original orientation. After the flap is down, the surgeon will place some antibiotic drops, anti-inflammatory drops and steroids to the eye for the healing of the eyes. You will then sit up and will notice that you can see better then you did without glasses or contacts. Your vision will be slightly blurred due to the eye drops your surgeon placed on the eye. Your surgeon will examine your eye before you leave to make sure the flap is sitting down correctly and that there is nothing underneath the flap. Some patients will feel slight irritation to the eyes and some may be very teary or sensitive to light immediately after the procedure. Sunglasses must be worn outdoors for at least a week to prevent visual changes.
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