Understand About LASIK Procedure Better and Drive all Your Worries Out

It will be quite natural for any one to feel little nervous and anxious at the time of surgery and it will be more pronounced in case of laser assisted surgery on eyes.

Only those patients who have had a sufficient prior knowledge and a clear understanding about the LASIK procedure alone can keep their calm and be composed during the day of surgery.

At the first instance, in order to keep your cool, you should first trust your surgeon and understand what LASIK procedure is all about and only that can make you to confidently face the surgery.

Once the surgery is over, you may not be able to drive your vehicle immediately, and hence it is better you take a person along for dropping you at the clinic and picking up back to home.

Getting Prepared for the D-day of Surgery

Make your mind and arrive at the clinic or the eye care center cool and composed well before the appointed time. Relax once you reach the center.

Be prepared to spend at least two to three hours at the eye care center and this time will normally differ from center to center.

Let the dress you wear be a comfortable one on the day of surgery. It is better to avoid any makeup, use of moisturizer, cologne or perfumes, as LASIK procedure needs a clean and sterile environment.

Many surgeons even recommend not to wear any earrings and hence visit the center without any earrings.

Know Few Basic Requirements before the LASIK Procedure

LASIK procedure is performed on patients in their wake state meaning that the procedure will be done on your eyes when you are awake.

In case of your experiencing any anxiety, your surgeon may administer a mild oral sedative. Many practicing surgeons always keep talking all through when the procedure is carried out and hence the patient will know what is happening and this will greatly reduce anxiety and stress.

Activities Before Surgery

Before the start of the actual surgery you will be provided with a cap and your facial area will be cleaned thoroughly using disinfectant solution.

Then you will be administered with antibiotic eye-drops and in few cases with anti-inflammatory eye-drop. At the time of administration of drops, you may feel a slight sting feeling but it will last only for very few seconds.

Sequence of Activities During the LASIK Procedure

Once you are taken inside the laser suite, you will be made to lie down in a comfortable position just below the excimer laser equipment.

Once you are comfortably settled, your surgeon will apply anesthetic eye-drops to make your eye ball surface area numb.

Then after keeping your eyelashes up and taped in an un-obstructive position, one eyelid speculum will be placed between your eyelids so as to avoid your blinking.

Though the speculum placed in between two of your eyelids may cause discomfort and a little pain, once the effect of anesthetic eye drops make your eye surface areas numb, you will not feel the pain or any discomfort.

Then with the aid of water-soluble ink, the surgeon will make small reference marks on your cornea. Reference marks are made for the purpose of serving as positional guides at the time of corneal flap realignment.

Then for the purpose of maintaining pressure within the eye, your surgeon will place a suction ring on your eye. Maintaining pressure of eye is very essential in keratectomy procedure and in flap-making process. At this juncture, you will start getting a dimmed vision.

In the next step using microkeratome, which is nothing but a small instrument with blade like mechanism, your surgeon will make a corneal flap.

The normal thickness of cornea will not be more than the thickness of your credit card and the corneal flap thus made will be very thin and will be made from around one fourth of the outermost corneal area.

Any expert surgeon will take only 30 seconds time for making the corneal flap and during the process of making the flap you may feel little pressure and you may not be able to see as the light on your pupil will be blocked by the instrument.

In the next step your surgeon will ask you to fix your eyesight or vision on a light source which will be green, or red, or yellow in color.

Now the surgeon will gently and carefully lift the hinged flap back and at this point also your vision will be blurred further.At this stage your surgeon will be ready to perform the laser procedure on you.

Laser procedure will normally take only 20 to 90 seconds depending upon the individual and as your surgeon does the laser procedure on your eye, you will not feel any pain or discomfort at all.

In order to reshape your cornea, your surgeon, with the aid of laser, will burn or vaporize small amounts of corneal tissue and this process is known as photoablation. During the process of photoablation, you will hear a humming noise for every laser pulse directed on your cornea.

At the time of conducting the laser procedure, the response of individuals will vary and few persons may report a blurring of the light on which they were asked to concentrate and few others may report momentary blackout of light or vision.

Under such circumstance, it will be normal for patients to get their eye vision removed from fixed target and in such cases your surgeon will stop the laser procedure and coax or cajole you to get back your vision fixed on the target position again so as to enable him to continue with the laser procedure again.

Once the corneal tissue reshaping procedure is completed, the excimer laser will be switched off. Then the treated eye surface will be washed with sterile saline solution so as to flush any of the remaining debris resulted out of the surgery. Then the corneal flap will be replaced back to its original position using the ink guide marks made for the purpose.

Nature has provided a wonderful and unique property to your cornea for sealing and at this juncture your eye will take around two to five minutes for creating a natural vacuum for holding the flap down in its place firmly.

There will not be any need for sutures. Then using dry and sterile cloth your eyes will be dried thoroughly.Once the eyes get dried, the placed eyelid speculum will be removed and you now can restore back your normal blinking at this stage.

You will be asked to stay quite with closed eyes for about half an hour. After the prescribed time, your surgeon will once again ensure that the corneal flap has set in its place properly.

It is also normal for patients who have undergone LASIK procedure to undergo or experience a certain level of discomfort, but the same may last only for 6 to 8 hours after the procedure is over.

The discomfort will be like having dirt or dust particles on the eye or sometimes resemble wearing a dirty contact lens. Few medications such as aspirin, Tylenol, ibuprofen, or any similar composition medicines that can be bought over the counter can be used to get rid of the uncomfortable sensation.

And under any normal circumstances, you will start feeling better on the following day.Do not pin hopes to get a perfect vision immediately after the procedure is completed and you will get only a blurred vision initially.

Your vision, immediately after LASIK procedure, will be like looking through a sheet of water or may be similar to wearing a dirty contact lens.

However, during the next day you will be able to experience a marked improvement in your vision and many patients have reported a very remarkable, exciting and a dramatic vision improvement in the next 24 hours.

LASIK procedure is very safe and without any complication provided you understand the procedure better and confidently sit for undergoing the surgery.

Once you get back your perfect vision back through LASIK, you may even start wondering how you missed it all these days.

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