Linda Briggs Cosmetic Surgery & Dentistry

Procedures   | Eyes

Femtolasik - a new laser eye correction procedure

FEMTOLASIK is a 2-step procedure involving two lasers.  First of all, the surgeon creates a small flap in the cornea to prepare the eye for the next step, the vision correction. The traditional LASIK method of vision correction requires a mechanical blade to make the flap.  However, in   the FEMTOLASIK procedure the flap is created using the femtosecond laser.  It makes the whole procedure completely blade-free and enables the surgeon to tailor the procedure according to the very unique characteristics of each individual patient.  A truly personalised treatment for everyone! Never before has safety, accuracy and patient comfort in laser eye surgery been so good, as proven by many thousands of FEMTOLASIK treatments!

Why FEMTOLASIK?

• The procedure takes only a few minutes.  
• The time the laser is in contact with the patient's eye is reduced to a minimum.  
• The laser energy used for FEMTOLASIK is about 100 times lower than with other lasers. This is more gentle to the corneal tissue and prevents temporary inflammatory reactions of the eye.  
• The recovery period is considerably shorter than with other techniques.  
• Patients are usually able to see well within hours, often even minutes.  
• FEMTOLASIK enables the surgeon to enlarge the treatment zone.  This reduces the risk of undesirable effects such as dry eyes, deterioration in night vision or haloes (rings of light that surround point sources of light).

The 4 steps of the FEMTOLASIK procedure

Step I: Pre-examination

Your eye doctor carries out a series of tests to ensure that your eyes are healthy and suitable for laser vision correction.  Then, your eye is electronically measured in details: thousands of data points are surveyed to create an accurate 3-dimensional image of your eye's surface.   From this image, the computer calculates the laser treatment that will best correct your refractive error.

Step 2: Flap Creation with the Femtosecond Laser

A few minutes before the laser treatment, you are given anaesthetic eye drops. Next, your eye is prepared for the correction itself by creating the corneal flap; the top layer of the cornea (approx 0.1mm thin) is separated with the laser and folded back.

Step 3: Corneal Correction

Now the curvaure of the cornea is reshaped according to the desired refraction.  An excimer laser ablates corneal tissue within seconds and precisely to one hundredth of a millimeter.

This procedure is performed inside the cornea; the outer, very sensitive layers of the cornea are not touched by the laser.  Finally, the treated are a is recovered with the flap that grows back quickly. The whole procedure takes only a couple of minutes.  Immediately after treatment, you can open and close your eye normally.

Step 4: Easy Aftercare

If necessary, your operative eye is protected with a contact lens for one day. Special eye drops promote healing.  During the first few hours after the procedure, you should not rub your eyes. You should also avoid contact sports (football, basketball, etc) and hot tubs and swimming pools for a couple of days.  There are no visible traces of surgery on the eye.