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LASIK Houston

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Am I a Candidate?

The Ideal Candidate for LASIK:

  • is within the correctable range
  • has not had a change in their glasses prescription for a year (has a stable refractive error)
  • is free of eye disease
  • is at least eighteen years old
  • will accept the potential risks, complications, and side effects of LASIK
View more LASIK FAQs.

 

LASIK-Candidate

LASIK Appointment Expectations

The Consultation: Your first appointment is a consultation with the doctor to determine if you are a candidate for LASIK.
 
The doctor may examine your eyes and the health of your cornea. Houston Eye Associates doctors recommend that you be over the age of 18 and that your prescription for eyeglasses or contacts has not changed. Also, patients with certain medical conditions or women who are pregnant may not be good candidates. The doctor will take measurements of your cornea to determine if you are a candidate, then you and your surgeon can discuss your treatment options based on your exam.
 
The Surgery: Once you are ready for surgery, the surgeon will numb your eye and then place a lid speculum in your eye to prevent blinking. Then the doctor will use an instrument (a microkeratome) or the IntraLase laser to create a flap in the cornea. The patient usually feels a little pressure, but not any pain. You will look into the laser beam as it reshapes your cornea, which takes less than a minute.
 
Then, the protective flap is placed back in its original position. The flap does not require stitches.
 
Some patients experience some discomfort after surgery, but this usually goes away within 24 hours.
 
Post Operative Care: Patients customarily come back within 24 to 48 hours after surgery and then routinely visit the doctor every three to six months. You will need to wear a shield to sleep for five nights, and you will need teardrops and possibly other drops immediately following surgery.

Are You a LASIK Candidate?

Take our LASIK self-test to find out!

Tired of Messing with Contacts? Can’t Wait to Throw Away Your Glasses?

Then LASIK Surgery is your window to freedom! LASIK surgery reduces or eliminates the need for glasses and contact lenses with minimal discomfort. The procedure takes about 15 minutes.
The surgeon numbs your eye and creates a small flap on your cornea. A laser is then used to remove a small amount of eye tissue. The flap is placed back in its pre-surgery position and does not even require stitches! The tissue removed from the eye helps to reshape the cornea and enhance your vision.
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LASIK-Choosing

Choosing the LASIK Eye Surgery Procedure That’s Right For You

Because of the many differences in technologies and your individual vision correction needs, it’s important to discuss all of your options with a qualified ophthalmologist like the LASIK Eye Surgeons at Houston Eye Associates. Only a LASIK expert can determine whether traditional LASIK, Allegretto Wave LASIK, or the Bladeless IntraLase Method would be right for you. As with all elective eye surgery procedures, you should ask your ophthalmologist for a complete list of the risks and complications associated with LASIK and the IntraLase Method. Learn more about each procedure below.

The Allegretto Wave

The Allegretto Wave is an exciting development in Custom LASIK technology. As one of the newer generation FDA-approved lasers, its technology reduces the chance that patients will see glare or halos, or have difficulty with night vision or night driving, after their surgery. 

 

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What Happens If My Eye Moves During Custom LASIK Surgery?

Not to worry. The Allegretto Wave’s eye-tracking technology charts the eye’s movement, allowing the beam to know where your eye is at all times. However, if your eye moves too quickly or out of the range of the beam, it stops and waits for your eye to come back to where it can continue.

Are There Different Types of WaveFront-Guided LASIK Surgery?

Yes. The Allegretto Wave wavefront-guided LASIK procedure was approved by the FDA for the reduction or elimination of up to +6.00 of hyperopia, up to -16.00 of myopia, and up to 6 diopters of astigmatism. Wavefront Optimized LASIK, on the other hand, is suited more for treating spherocylinder errors without affecting higher-order aberrations, especially spherical aberration. All Wavefront-guided LASIK is based on aberrometry measurements and is designed to treat both spherocylinder and higher-order aberrations.
 
At Houston Eye Associates, we choose to use the Allegretto Wave for Custom LASIK. The Allegretto Wave uses wavefront-guided technology, which allows for a detailed map of your eye down to the microscopic level. This helps to preserve as much corneal tissue as possible which results in extremely clear vision. While many LASIK laser vision technologies use wavefront-guided technology, the Allegretto Wave is specifically capable of reading a large optical zone. This is the part of the cornea that is touched by the laser beam. This is important for those with very large pupils and for retaining a high level of night vision. By producing this large optical zone, night vision issues, such as glares and halos are virtually eliminated.
 

Choosing the LASIK Eye Surgery Procedure That’s Right For You

Because of the many differences in technologies and your individual vision correction needs, it’s important to discuss all of your options with a qualified ophthalmologist like the LASIK Eye Surgeons at Houston Eye Associates. Only a LASIK expert can determine whether traditional LASIK, Allegretto Wave LASIK, or the Bladeless IntraLase Method would be right for you. As with all elective eye surgery procedures, you should ask your ophthalmologist for a complete list of the risks and complications associated with LASIK and the IntraLase Method.

Blade-FREE LASIK

What is Blade-FREE LASIK, or FS-200 Bladeless LASIK?

Traditional LASIK surgery uses an instrument called a microkeratome for the creation of corneal flaps. The microkeratome is a fine, oscillating, hand-held steel blade that creates a cut as it travels across the cornea. While effective, the microkeratome has not changed significantly in 30 years of use in refractive surgery, and the quality of the outcome relies heavily on the skill of the individual surgeon performing the procedure.
The new IntraLase LASIK surgery, by contrast, eliminates the need for ophthalmologists to use a blade at all. Instead, this computer-controlled Blade-FREE technology works by delivering rapid pulses of light, a quadrillionth of a second each, to a pre-programmed depth and position within the cornea. Each pulse forms a microscopic bubble. As the IntraLase laser moves back and forth across the eye, the bubbles are then connected to form the corneal flap.
 
Also, in contrast to a microkeratome, which simply delivers a one-dimensional cut, the blade-free LASIK IntraLase procedure enables the eye surgeon to precisely design and control many aspects of the flap itself, such as its thickness, its circumference, and the angle of its edges, effectively customizing the flap to the individual patient’s eye. This is of particular benefit to patients who have steep, flat, or thin corneas, as they may not have been candidates for traditional LASIK surgery.
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