The Micro-Lasik ® Procedure

Your eyes will be numbed with an anesthesia, administered in the form of eye drops, then a spacer is placed on your lids to keep your eyes open during the procedure. A microkeratome creates a protective flap on the surface of the cornea. During this process you will only feel a very minimal amount of pressure, similar to that of squeezing your eyes shut. There is no discomfort with this step. Then the doctor will ask you to look directly at a light, this is the laser that will reshape your cornea. This step takes less than a minute to complete. Finally the protective flap will be placed back on the cornea where it will naturally adhere without any need for stitches. Post-procedure, few patients report a mild level of discomfort but this usually disappears within 12 to 24 hours.

Advantages of MICRO-LASIK^®

To improve the safety of your refractive procedure, Dr. Lin has developed a technique called, “MICRO-LASIK^®”.  He has performed over 20,000 procedures using MICRO-LASIK^® and has published and lectured on this technique nationally.

With MICRO-LASIK^® , corneal flaps are almost 50% thinner than flaps created by other microkeratomes. A thinner flap means there is more cornea tissue under the flap, to give the cornea strength. Patients will benefit from this extra margin of safety, especially those patients with larger pupils and higher refractive errors, because more corneal tissue needs to be treated. The extra corneal tissue available with MICRO-LASIK^® allows Dr. Lin greater flexibility in treating your eyes, and can reduce side effects such as halos, cornea ectasia and dry eyes. Dr. Lin’s MICRO-LASIK^® results are superior to most published LASIK results.

When the pupil is large, a larger optical zone should be used to decrease glare and halos at night. Therefore, more corneal tissue will be removed. Currently most surgeons agree that the residual cornea should be at least 250 to 300 microns (µm=1/1000th mm). With LASIK a 180 micron flap is usually created so we are unable to safely utilize the 6.5mm optical zone.

With MICRO-LASIK^®, a 100 micron flap is created, so we are able to use a 6.5mm optical zone. More residual cornea is available to give the cornea strength after reducing side effects using MICRO-LASIK^®

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