Laser eye treatment information and guides

Laser eye articles

• Laser eye surgery procedure: what happens?
• Are you suitable for laser eye surgery?
• For and against laser eye treatment
• What happens if laser eye surgery does not work?
• Recovery after laser eye surgery
• The laser eye surgery healing process
• Laser eye surgery effects
• PRK vs. LASIK
• LASIK eye surgery
• PRK eye surgery
• Short sighted PRK surgery
• LASEK eye surgery
• Wavefront LASIK surgery
• Zyoptix LASIK surgery
• EpiLASIK surgery
• IntraLASIK surgery
• How does the eye work?
• Common vision problems
• Laser surgery for short sightedness
• Laser surgery for long sightedness
• Laser surgery for astigmatism
• Laser surgery for presbyopia
• How does laser eye treatment work?
• Laser eye clinic
• Corrective eye surgery
• Laser eye surgeon

Laser surgery for short sightedness

Laser surgery has proved hugely successful for treating certain eye problems such as short sightedness, often referred to as near sightedness or myopia.

So how does it work? Laser eye surgery for short sightedness actually alters the length and shape of the cornea, to allow it to focus in the correct manner. Laser treatment is not always suitable for people with severe short sightedness. However in the right circumstances, laser correction can be highly effective in treating short sightedness.

There are two common laser eye treatment procedures for short sightedness. In mild cases of short sightedness, short sighted PRK surgery is used to take some of the cornea tissue and alter its shape. The patient may experience pain for a couple of days after the procedure. In the alternative procedure known as LASIK surgery, a flap is made to remove the cornea tissue and alter its shape. Each eye takes about fifteen minutes to operate on. Vision can be blurred for a few days during recovery after laser eye surgery.

What is short sightedness?

With short sightedness, light rays appear in front of the inside of the back of the eye or retina instead of on it. Short sightedness is an eye condition where anything in the distance appears as a blur, while in general, the person can still clearly see anything that is close to them. In some cases the eyes are longer from the front to the back than they should be, or because the front, often called the cornea, has more of a steep curve than is usual. When the cornea is too curved, or the distance between the front and the back is more than it should be, this affects the eye’s ability to focus.

People may have different degrees of short sightedness. The extent of short sightedness depends on how strong a focus there is in the lens. The lens’ focusing power is measured in dioptres, or D. Between 0.5D and 3.0D is mild short sightedness, between 3.0D and 6.0D is medium, and above 6.0d is severe.

Short sightedness is extremely common and is suffered to one degree or another by more than five billion people in Britain. Most short sighted people wear glasses or contact lenses to correct the problem, but permanent vision correction has also become an option with the advent of laser surgery.

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