Most people have heard of LASIK, but not many know about a Refractive Lens Exchange. We hope this article will help you understand the pros and cons of each!
What is LASIK?
LASIK is really an acronym for Laser Assisted In-Situ Keratomileusis. It’s a “refractive” procedure that changes your focal point, or where your eye focuses best. You might think of it as putting your glasses prescription in your eyes, but how does it work?
After getting detailed measurements of how your eyes are shaped and how they focus light, your surgeon develops a custom treatment for each of your eyes. This treatment is applied to the cornea of your eye, which is the clear, front window that you see the world through. The goal is to reshape the cornea such that light entering your eye from anything in the distance is focused perfectly on the back surface of your eye, the retina.
Light entering your eye is really focused by two things: your cornea and your lens. The lens can change shape and that changes your focal point. That’s how you can focus on something far away and then look at a book and have it in focus. Distant objects and near objects are not in focus at the same time, but the lens can change very quickly so that everything you look at is in focus.
Unfortunately, there is a process called Presbyopia where the lens becomes less flexible and can’t change focus as well. You’ll notice this as needing just a little more time to switch from reading to seeing a tree far away. This process keeps progressing: you won’t be able to see to read while wearing your glasses and will start to need bi-focal or progressive lenses that add some magnification to help with reading. This happens to everyone; it usually starts in your early 40s and finishes at about age 60.
So even though LASIK will help you see in the distance, a flexible lens is necessary to see up close without glasses.
What is Refractive Lens Exchange?
Just to recap, light enters your eye through your cornea and it also passes through the lens in your eye to focus on the back of your eye (the retina).
Instead of changing the shape of the cornea with LASIK, we can replace the lens inside your eye. Similar to LASIK, your surgeon develops a custom treatment for each eye based on precision, laser measurements of your eye shape.
Similar to LASIK, you could consider this procedure as putting your glasses prescription into your eye.
What’s the advantage of this method? When your natural lens can’t change focus to be able to read, we can replace it with an artificial trifocal lens inside your eye. This accomplishes everything that LASIK does and more. On top of that, you won’t ever need cataract surgery in your life, because the lens has already been replaced.
Advantages of Each
