For years we have seen advertising for laser eye treatments to help reduce or eliminate the need for corrective lenses. LASIK and PRK surgery are the common options for this eye treatment, and to be fair the technology has come a long way in helping millions of people correct their vision to a point where they either can wear no glasses or corrective lenses or the correction required is very small. However, there are limits to these options and some patients have correction needs that are too much for these procedures. This is where phakic intraocular lenses come in, and patients from Plantation, Sunrise, Weston, Boca Raton, Davie, Parkland, and the surrounding areas have had success with these phakic intraocular lenses in correcting their vision. Dr. Andrew Shatz and the team at SightTrust Eye Institute are experts at these phakic intraocular lenses and can provide you with the details when you call to schedule an appointment.
How Are Phakic Intraocular Lenses Different from LASIK or PRK?
Perhaps the biggest difference is that LASIK is a procedure that ultimately reshapes the cornea of the eye by shaving off some of the cornea. Phakic intraocular lenses are implants that don’t remove any of the cornea, and while designed to be a permanent placement, they can be removed in the future if needed for any reason. You can’t say that you can reverse LASIK.
LASIK vision correction for nearsighted patients involves using a laser to remove a portion of the cornea in order to correct the vision issue. While very successful for most people, there are still issues of eye irritation, dry eyes, and minor vision distortion that can come with this surgery. Additionally, because there is only so much cornea that a person has, LASIK vision correction can only do so much, and that varies from person to person. It is possible that the patient will still need to wear corrective lenses even after LASIK surgery.
Phakic intraocular lenses tend to provide patients with sharper vision because they do not remove any cornea material, but instead, the lens implant itself re-focuses the eye for proper vision. In rare cases, some laser adjustments to the cornea might be needed to fine-tune a patient’s vision after surgery, but these are minor, and most patients do not require this. Additionally, Dr. Shatz and the team at SightTrust Eye Institute have successfully used phakic intraocular lenses to correct farsightedness in patients, as well as astigmatism patients for over 15 years.
Choose The Best in Ophthalmology
When you or a loved one is in need of an ophthalmologist, don’t just pick one at random. Instead, you want an ophthalmologist that has done more than 25,000 surgeries and has an experienced staff ready to make your situation their highest priority. Patients in Plantation, Sunrise, Weston, Boca Raton, Davie, Parkland, and the surrounding areas all agree that SightTrust Eye Institute is the place you should go.
