Abstract
Purpose: :
To assess patient ratings of postoperative compared to preoperative vision following LASIK to determine whether subjective "super-vision" was achieved.
Methods: :
Two hundred eyes of 100 consecutive patients were treated with Advanced CustomVue wavefront-guided LASIK with iris registration and a target of emmetropia. All eyes had thin flaps with a Zyoptix XP microkeratome (120-micron head) and were treated with topical cyclosporine for at least two weeks preoperatively and at least three months postoperatively. All procedures were performed by the author in a private clinic setting. A brief patient questionnaire comparing postoperative uncorrected vision to corrected preoperative vision was administered at the conclusion of their postoperative course, including any enhancement surgery if necessary.
Results: :
There were no complications. Nearly all patients (96/100 or 96%) reported that their bilateral uncorrected vision after surgery was better than their vision with glasses or contact lenses before surgery. Four patients (4%) said pre- and post-op vision were equal (even though one of those subjects improved from 20/20 best-corrected to 20/10 UCVA). No patient said uncorrected vision after surgery was worse than preoperative corrected vision.
Conclusions: :
Super-vision cannot be adequately defined by Snellen acuity or contrast resolution testing as vision is ultimately a complex and subjective phenomenon. For this reason, subjective assessment of post-operative vision by patients is an important metric in assessing super-vision. By such patient-assessed measures, 96% of subjects in this study achieved super-vision following wavefront-guided LASIK surgery.
Keywords: refractive surgery: LASIK • refractive surgery: optical quality