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Custom LASIK is a huge advance on traditional LASIK. There are several companies that manufacture LASIK systems for custom LASIK, each with its own trade name. The VISX CustomVue system is one of the best-known systems, used by many highly-qualified LASIK surgeons who want to give their patients the best vision correction possible. There is also Alcon’s CustomCornea® and the Bausch & Lomb Zyoptix system, both excellent.

Custom LASIK, regardless of which company manufactured the equipment, uses a mapping system to diagnose the exact contours of each of your eyes. This data then guides the laser in your treatment. This is known as Wavefront-guided LASIK, and it yields excellent vision results. Traditional LASIK does not use a Wavefront system.

Wavefront technology

Wavefront technology is not new, but its use in vision correction is new. Astronomers have used it for years to adjust their telescopes for alterations in light caused by the Earth’s atmosphere. When light is shone into your eye by an eye surgeon using a wavefront system, that light reflects back to the system. The system sends it in evenly lined-up light waves. As that light passes through the eye, it is modified by aberrations in the eye’s shape, so that some of the returning light waves travel back ahead of others, and the front ends of the group of light waves are in a wavy formation.

The difference between what goes into the eye and what returns from it is measured and recorded. A colored 3-D map is the result. Now your LASIK surgeon knows exactly how your eye is shaped, and how it needs to be corrected to give you clear vision.

Traditional LASIK

No wavefront 3-D map is made. The LASIK treatment is the same as when such maps are made, but it is not guided by this wavefront map data. What guides it? Less detailed information guides it, which is gathered from several optical machines.

• An auto-refractor – a machine that measures your prescription using infrared light. You can’t see that light, as it’s outside our visual range. You look at an image in the machine, and the auto-refractor changes the image size until it comes to a clear focus for you. Sensors are picking up the reflected infrared light from your eyes.

• A corneal topographer – again, you look into this machine through a special opening and sensors detect several hundred points on each eye. Software then connects these points to create a colored map of each eye.

• A pupilometer – a handheld instrument which measures the diameter of the eye’s pupil, both in darkness and in light. This is important for planning the exact treatment area around the pupil.

Your eye surgeon puts all this data together and forms a clear understanding of how your cornea needs to be reshaped.

Comparison

More detailed and precise information is gathered by the wavefront system, so that your LASIK treatment based on it is more precise. It will correct both lower- and higher-order aberrations, whereas traditional LASIK corrects only lower-order aberrations.

• Lower-order aberrations are myopia, hyperopia, and astigmatism.

• Higher-order aberrations are numerous and still being discovered – about 60 have been pinpointed so far. Some examples are: halos around lights, starburst, and glare, which can be side effects of traditional LASIK, and other more subtle conditions like coma, trefoil and quadrafoil. Each is a specific 3D wavefront shape. In general, higher-order aberrations are connected with poor night vision and double vision.

Because a wavefront system detects and maps the higher-order aberrations, it can also treat them, since the wavefront data guides the extraordinarily precise laser. A qualified and experienced LASIK surgeon typically offers wavefront-guided LASIK, and will screen you carefully to make sure you’re a good candidate.

Contact the experienced professionals at Hummel Eye Associates today for your initial consultation.

Custom LASIK

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