New Technology Increasing the Chance of 20/20 Vision to 99%

If you have read or heard anything about LASIK in the past year or two, then you probably know about the new Wavefront technology, touted as the newest advancement to help give you better vision than traditional LASIK can offer. What you may not have heard of is the newest add-on to Wavefront LASIK, called iris registration.

How It Works

Here is how Los Angeles LASIK surgeon Dr. Robert Maloney describes iris registration in action: "Traditional lasers track your eye moving left, right or up, down. And, so, if you move your eye left or right or up or down the laser beam follows you and that's good…There's other ways, however, you can move your eyes: you can, for example, move closer or further from the laser." Iris registration tracks this movement and communicates it with the laser so that the eye tracking points are perfectly matched with the laser during surgery.

The new technology can also track rotational movements of the eye. When you lay down your eyes can rotate slightly clockwise or counter clockwise. "Until now it hasn't been possible to track that movement," says Dr. Maloney. "And when your eyes rotate the laser treatment has to rotate with it. Until now it didn’t. So the laser treatment was basically rotated at the wrong direction compared to where your eye is. With the iris tracking, now the laser rotates during the laser treatment to match the rotation of your eye…It takes Wavefront to the whole higher level."

This can mean an even greater chance of 20/20 vision than with conventional LASIK or even Wavefront alone. With Wavefront, about 95% of Dr. Maloney's patients achieve 20/20 vision and he is expecting that number to rise to 99% now with the iris tracking technology.

These improved results are even starting get noticed by some of Dr. Maloney's colleagues. "A doctor I worked with for years said to me recently, 'what are you doing differently? Everybody's coming out perfectly.' I attribute that to iris registration."

Complications

The good news is that iris registration does not present any additional complications that can be attributed to it specifically. The bad news is that it does not reduce the occurrence of complications normally associated with LASIK (such as dry eye). However, Dr. Maloney has seen fewer problems with quality of vision using iris registration over traditional LASIK. "Because of that perfect alignment of the eye and the laser, you’re less likely to have problems with hazy vision or ghost images or night glare."

Cost

At Dr. Maloney's office the fee for LASIK is the same with or without iris registration. However, adding iris registration to an existing laser can cost a doctor several thousand dollars. As this option is added by more and more doctors, some may choose to charge a little bit more for LASIK with iris registration. However, the enhancement rate (that is the number of patients that require a touch up after surgery) is greatly reduced by iris registration. This can cost an additional $200 or more, so a small increase in price initially may pay off in terms of comfort, quality, and follow up care.

Limitations

Though this new technology can mean great results for a large number of people, there are still some that will be left without the option of iris registration. In the one year period that Dr. Maloney has offered iris registration, he was unable to use it in about 10% of his patients, either because he could not get a good image of the eye or the eye was too difficult to measure using the available instrumentation.

There are also currently a limited number of surgeons that offer iris registration in their office. "Many surgeons have taken the point of view let's wait and see what the results look like," says Dr. Maloney. "Well, now that the results look good, more and more surgeons have started getting it."

Right now only the VISX brand laser is equipped with iris registration, but all of the other major lasers are developing similar technology. This means that within the next year or two this now limited technology will probably be the norm, and will most likely include additional developments that will help reach a larger portion of that 10% that have to go without now.

"What iris registration is, is it takes Wavefront to the next level," says Dr. Maloney. "There will be further improvements and refinements, but it is a big leap forward."

Source: http://www.locateadoc.com