LASIK not right for you? Alternatives abound

Did you know that LASIK is not the right choice for everyone hoping to leave their glasses behind? There are so many factors that come into play, and the only way to know if it’s for you is to get a professional evaluation.

If it turns out you’re not a candidate, don’t give up! There are many innovative, safe alternatives to LASIK that deliver freedom from glasses, says Dr. Bala Ambati, an ophthalmologist at the Moran Eye Center at University of Utah Health Care.

Dry eyes and thin corneas? No problem
John dealt with bad vision from the time he was in fourth grade. Because he had severe myopia, distant objects, such as blackboards in classrooms or baseballs out in the field, appeared as blurs. He wore glasses and tried hard contacts, but for him, the hard contacts were “the worst — they actually caused pain.” Soft contact lenses were a little bit better but still painful.
When he moved from Arkansas to Salt Lake City, the dry air made it impossible for John to wear contacts at all. On top of that, he found out he had something called “map dot dystrophy”— basically an erosion of the cornea, the clear covering of the eye that focuses light.

“I woke up feeling like I had knives in my eyes,” he recalled. “The pain would last for two hours at a time. I went to so many doctors, and they all just told me to use various kinds of eye drops, which didn’t help at all.”

Finally, John went to Dr. Ambati at the Moran Eye Center. Dr. Ambati treated his corneal erosion and then suggested that he consider PRK (which stands for Advanced Surface Ablation Photorefractive Keratectomy). PRK is a precise laser procedure that reshapes the surface of the cornea, eliminating the need for contact lenses. It’s an excellent option for patients with thinner corneas or severe dry eyes.

“I woke up feeling like I had knives in my eyes,” said John, describing map dot dystrophy.
“PRK is a very predictable and stable procedure,” Dr. Ambati said. “It does sometimes cause a bit of discomfort for a few days, and it takes a few weeks for patients to experience optimal vision, but once they do, the satisfaction rate is extremely high.”

As it turned out, PRK was the perfect option for John.

“The entire procedure was pretty cool,” he said. “I felt like it was something from the future, and I came out of it with almost perfect vision.”

Contact lens…implants?
As a web developer, Rachel spends long hours in front of a screen. But she has “an incredibly high correction” and thin corneas, so LASIK was not for her. In order to get through her day, she was juggling three pairs of glasses — one for distance, one for close up, and then sunglasses. She also tried contacts but they really didn’t work out because she likes to swim and it was hard to take the contacts in and out every time she got into the water.

Searching for a solution, she heard about ICL (short for Implantable Contact Lenses), a procedure involving lenses that were developed for patients with high levels of nearsightedness and minimal amounts of astigmatism and are implanted in front of or behind the iris. But one thing was holding Rachel back.

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