Many of our ptients have come in asking what makes our procedure different from a PRK since in both procedures the skin is removed. To put it simply, LASEK is virtually painless compared to a PRK.

There is virtually no pain or discomfort with our LASEK procedure. For patients that elect to have the older PRK surgery, there is immense pain for up to a week or more after surgery. While both procedures don’t cut flaps, in a PRK the skin is sanded it off, which uses a much more abrasive force than the gentler LASEK procedure.

Rather than using a softening solution to allow the skin to loosen, a PRK procedures opt to remove the skin right away. PRK procedures use a small sander to sand the skin off to reach the cornea. The result of this force is that patients experience intense pain and heal slower than with the LASEK procedure.

LASEK is the most advanced version of laser vision correction that is possible with modern medicine today. LASIK is 10x as risky, reduces the structural integrity of your eyes, can worsen glares, halos, and dry eyes, may not get you to your best vision possible. There are also issues of flap complications before and after surgery that may cause a LASIK patient to have poor vision or even go blind after treatment.

The major fear of LASIK after surgery is cutting the corneal flap. There have been many instances of corneal flaps dislodging after trauma to the head, getting poked in the eye etc. Thus, the flap created during LASIK carries two major risks: the risk of a poor flap placement or a disintegrating flap in the OR, and the postoperative risk of having a flap dislodging at any moment.

The end result of all these complications, if they are not properly treated is a corneal transplant and patient will end up being blind. This is why professional sports players, the US military, and airline pilots all opt for LASEK treatments over LASIK

Dr. Chynn use to perform LASIK and had LASIK on himself, but switched over to LASEK (or SafeSight) in 2005 because he realised that it was a much safer procedure with less risk and complications than a LASIK.

LASIK Procedure: This video shows a LASIK procedure doing an enhancement (LASIK over a LASIK). The doctor attempts to flip the flap up to perform the procedure, but the flap disintegrates as soon as the doctor begins the operation.

Patients are often confused about all the terminology regarding LASIK and LASEK. Basically, the former is cutting, and the latter is non-cutting. A totally different issue is custom vs. standard. For clarity, here are all the terms that all indicate custom, meaning these terms are all synonyms: custom, wavefront, CustomVue, Hi-Def. The non-custom, non-standard type of treatment is usually referred to as “standard” (because non-custom or non-hi-def sounds bad to the customer). You should be very clear about what is the difference between these two options.

Standard means the laser is correcting your prescription to the same degree of precision as glasses or contacts–namely, in increments of +/- 0.25 diopters. For example, your contact or eyeglass prescription is always given in quarter diopter increments, like -3.00 or -3.25, there is nothing in-between. If you’re observant and have looked at your prescription over the years, you’ve already noticed this, so if your optometrist gives you a prescription for new glasses that were -3.18, you would say something like, “Wow, I guess you guys have figured out how to grind glasses more precisely these days–that’s really cool!”

Unfortunately, that’s also not true. It’s basically impossible to make eyeglasses or contacts that accurate. More unfortunately, these days some contact and lens manufacturers are trying to market their products as “digital” or “custom” or “wavefront.” This is impossible, as when you look out of contacts or glasses, the contacts move in your eye, and your eye looks out of different parts of your glasses. Therefore, even if the lens is “custom” you will wind up looking out of the wrong part of the lens, so you will not see any benefit from your “digital” lenses (that you paid more for).

In contrast, with LASEK, you can get a correction that is actually the precise one you need–not some average to the nearest quarter. Moreover, with the VISX S4 IR system, you will actually have 50 different prescriptions lasered onto your cornea accurate to the nearest hundredth! This is why these days, after our Hi-Def SafeSight procedure, the majority of our patients are actually seeing better without glasses and contacts than they did with them–because it’s just a much more accurate prescription.

Furthermore, when Dr. Chynn was performing CustomVue LASIK, he wasn’t getting nearly this many people better than 20/20. The reason is that the CustomVue WaveScan is obtained before the cut in LASIK is made—yet many published studies have reported that cutting a flap distorts the WaveScan. Therefore, the surgeon winds up using a WaveScan to laser the cornea that is not 100% accurate–because it was obtained before the flap was made.

This is why when Dr. Chynn was performing CustomVue LASIK, he was only getting about 10-20% of his patients seeing better than 20/20. Once he switched to LASEK, he immediately started getting 30-40% of his patients better than 20/20. Now, it’s more like 50-60%. The reason his results are better now, with the same laser, is because by not cutting a flap, the WaveFront scan is 100% accurate, and not distorted by the flap, so the treatment is exactly what is needed, rather than what would have been needed if a flap hadn’t been cut (but was) in LASIK.

We understand that this explanation is somewhat complicated, so invite you to call our centre, make an appointment for a free consultation, and then have Dr. Chynn or one of his 4 doctors (all true MD surgeons, not ODs or optometrists or “techs”) explain this in more detail.