Refractive Surgery

Written by John Taylor

Fix Eye Conditions with Refractive Surgery Most people in the world have some type of eye disorder.  The three main types of these are myopia, hyperopia, and astigmatism.  If you have bad eyesight, then you know how annoying this can be.  If you don't have glasses or contacts on, then you will have trouble seeing certain objects, whether they are close up or far away.  While wearing glasses and contact lenses does help you see, they aren't a very good method.  Glasses can be annoying and expensive, while contact lenses can really irritate the eyes.  For the longest time, people just accepted this fate, and dealt with these options if they wanted to see clearly.  That isn't the case anymore.  Now you have the option of using refractive surgery to fix your eyesight and lower your dependence on these other eyesight methods. The term 'refractive surgery' can apply to any surgical procedure that improves eyesight.  While there are many reasons for this, the main reasons are because of the top three types of eye disorders.  Myopia happens when there is a defect in the eye that causes near-sightedness.  This means that you have trouble seeing images that are far away.  The farther away that they are, the harder it will be for you to focus on that image.  This is the most common eye disorder, one that requires that you wear glasses if the problem is bad enough. Hyperopia is the exact opposite of myopia.  Instead of having a hard time seeing things that are far away, you can't see things that are close up.  This is also called far-sightedness.  This can cause problems when trying to read things such as books and newspapers.  Most people start to see a problem with this as they get older.  You may notice that you need the help of reading glasses more and more. Finally, some people have astigmatism.  Rather than having a hard time focusing on things that are far away or close up, this condition means that everything that you see is blurred.  This happens when there is an irregular curvature of your cornea.  With all three of these eye conditions, refractive surgery can help.  For many, it can completely and permanently cure your eye problems, giving you perfect vision.  Although there are many types of refractive surgeries, laser eye correction is by far the most popular.  There are several different kinds of laser eye surgery methods, but LASIK is the most popular.  This is short for laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis.  With this method, eye surgeons use a laser to cut open the cornea of your eye, creating a flap.  They then use another laser to burn away some of the inside of your cornea, which cures the defects present there. This isn't the only method of laser eye correction surgery, though.  PRK, also known as photorefractive keratectomy, is actually one of the first eye surgery methods to use a laser.  It uses the same equipment as LASIK, except instead of creating a flap, they make the corrections right on the outside surface of the cornea. If you have eye problems and you are sick and tired of having to wear glasses and contacts, you should really consider going through refractive surgery.  There has been a lot of success with this method.  Just think of it.  You will never have to wear glasses or contacts again.  You will be able to see both far away and close up without these aides.  This is often very much worth the sometimes high prices for these procedures.  If you are willing to go through surgery to cure your eye problems, you should definitely consider LASIK or PRK.

 

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