What Is Custom Wavefront LASIK?

By Ahmed Nasrullah, MD

Dulles Eye Associates

. http://www.dceyedr.com/

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What Is Custom Wavefront LASIK?

Custom wavefront LASIK — also called “custom LASIK” or “wavefront LASIK” — offers vision correction surgery with a great degree of precision and personalization by using advanced wavefront technology to evaluate the unique characteristics of your eyes.

Custom LASIK uses precise, detailed information to program the excimer laser that reshapes your eye during the vision correction procedure. Eyeglass prescriptions are not unique — thousands, even millions, of people can have the same eyeglass prescription. Because of unique characteristics of each person’s eyes that cannot be measured with the conventional technology used to determine refractive error during an eye exam, people who have the same eyeglasses prescription will see the world with different degrees of clarity with those same prescription lenses.

During a routine eye exam, your doctor will introduce different lenses in front of your eyes while you are looking at an eye chart and ask, “Which lens makes the letters look clearer — lens 1 or lens 2?” Sometimes the lenses will look the same, and it’s hard to choose which one makes the chart look clearer. Maybe a lens in between the two?

With custom wavefront LASIK, the power of lenses required to correct your vision is measured in 0.01 D units. In other words, imagine if during your eye exam, instead of having just “lens 1” and “lens 2” to choose from, you had 24 additional lenses in between these two to choose from.

Thankfully, choosing the lens that most accurately corrects your vision for a custom LASIK procedure is done instantaneously by a computer, instead of making you decide So, by evaluating the refractive errors of your eyes in 0.01 D increments (instead of 0.25 D increments, as in a routine eye exam), measurements used for custom wavefront LASIK are 25 times more precise than lens powers used in an eyeglasses prescription.

When your doctor is determining your eyeglass prescription during your eye exam, he or she is evaluating your eye’s ability to focus light as a unified whole. One lens prescription is determined for your entire eye.

In addition to the much greater precision of measurements taken for custom LASIK, these measurements are gathered from hundreds of separate reference points on the front surface of the eye. All these data are gathered and used to create a detailed map of the refractive error and focusing imperfections called higher-order aberrations across the entire cornea, and then used to program the laser to deliver a 100 percent personalized vision correction for your specific needs.

Is Custom LASIK
Right For You?

To answer this question many factors should be considered — including your eyeglasses prescription, the thickness of your cornea, your current satisfaction with your vision with glasses, how critical you are about the quality of your visual acuity, your visual needs, and your budget.

During an exam and consultation, your eye doctor and/or LASIK surgeon can better inform you about your specific needs.

Also, your surgeon will be able to explain which type of LASIK technology he or she prefers and the visual outcomes patients with refractive errors similar to yours have attained with that technology.