Your eyes are an essential part of your everyday life which is why it’s important to take care of your eye health with the help of an eye doctor. While at your schedule eye appointment, you’ll have your eyes evaluated for any issues like blurred vision, loss of vision both near and far-sighted, astigmatism, and eye pressure. During these checks, your eye doctor may notice issues that require eye surgery and if they are not an eye doctor that offers surgery options, they’ll refer you to an eye surgeon to does.
Common eye surgery options include laser eye surgery known as LASIK and LASEK, PRK, Epi-LASIK, CK, IOL, and refractive lens exchange. Let’s discuss the top 3 common surgery options.
LASIK — The LASIK acronym stands for laser-assisted in-situ keratomileusis. During this procedure, the eye surgeon (ophthalmologist) creates a flap in your cornea by making a thin circular cut. Then using a non-heated laser, the surgeon will remove layers from the center of the cornea to fix nearsighted or farsighted vision. This will also fix any astigmatism you may have.
This popular procedure takes roughly 10 to 15 minutes per eye and costs anywhere from $1,500 to $2,500 per eye.
LASEK — The LASEK acronym stands for laser-assisted subepithelial keratomileusis. This is different than LASIK because the eye surgeon does not create a flap in your cornea but in the epithelium. The remaining procedure is completed just as LASIK only with the epithelium not cornea and the procedure time plus costs is roughly the same.
PRK — The PRK acronym stands for photorefractive keratectomy. While this was the first procedure to correct refractive eye issues, it’s not as popular as LASIK/LASEK due to PRK having a longer recovery time than both.
With PRK your eye surgeon will remove your epithelium so a new one can grow back.
As you can see, all three procedures are similar so make sure you understand which option is right for you based on what your eye surgeon recommends.
