The Very Best Technology For LASIK Laser Eye Surgery
Professor Dan Reinstein of the London Vision Clinic, explains takes you under the hood of the Carl Zeiss VisuMax Femtosecond laser technology. It is used to perform refractive and LASIK Laser Eye Surgery.
Over 90% of patients can be treated by the VisuMax laser LASIK is the most common form of Laser Eye Surgery and it offers the least discomfort and the fastest recovery time of any laser eye surgery. Over 90% of patients can be treated by the VisuMax laser. Actually, most patients can be back at work within 24 hours.
Professor Reinstein On The Technology Of The VisuMax LASIK Laser
Well, the VisuMax was perceived as a femto second laser that would be accurate enough to be able to produce incisions within the stromal component of the cornea and stand alone as an individual, fully contained refractive surgical tool. The folks at Carl Zeiss Meditec, they recruited some their top optical scientists in order to design the optics of this laser, not only so that the beam could be extremely tightly focused, meaning that the drop off in energy from the interface, impact point, the drop off is very, very steep, meaning that there is very little eradiation of the surrounding tissue that would produce heat. But also they designed a beam path which means that the energy transfer from the head of the laser all the way to the cornea of the patient is very efficient and the way that they designed this is very impressive. The machine was dropped into my clinic by crane and within an hour of wheeling it into the operating room it was ready to treat.
LASIK Laser Eye Surgery Results With The VisuMax
The VisuMax was designed to do refractive surgery by lenticular extraction from the cornea, so clearly it is able to create flaps with an extraordinary amount of accuracy. We performed a study using very high frequency digital ultrasound which has a one micron measurement precision within the flap and we ran a series of eyes with intended flap thickness of 110 microns. The flap thickness achieved had an average of 112 micros and the standard aviation of this group of eyes was under 8 microns. Accurate flap making, if you like, as a side effect of building a machine that can do refracted surgical cuts within the cornea.
The Advantages Of The VisuMax Laser During Laser Eye Surgery
Instead of using planar applanation, it uses a curved contact glass. The advantages of doing that are that you can create flaps without really increasing the intraocular pressure very much and this means that during the procedure patients really do retain vision throughout. Because of the curved contact glass and because the patient is able to self centre their eye on the fixation target and because the contact lens and the fixation target are coaxial, this system for all intents and purposes, auto centrates itself, it auto centrates the flap on the corneal vertex or visual axis, and that is exactly where you want it to be, because of course ablations should be centred on the visual axis
Find out more about London Vision Clinic’s unique partnership with the world renowned Carl Zeiss laser manufacturer.
VisuMax LASIK Laser Eye Surgery Candidate Example
Our patient is a 27 year old musician with moderate to high myopia of -7.5 in whom a full ocular examination was normal and demonstrated him to be a very good candidate for Lasik. We obtain photopic and scotopic WASKA high resolution wave front measurement, together with the iris, limbus and conjunctiva vessel capture for ocular alignment of the ablation profile under the laser. Atlas typography is imported together with the wave front data into the CRS master, which allows us to design the ablation profile appropriate for this patient.
