One of our most cherished senses has to be the gift of sight, but as any glasses wearer will tell you, how nice it would be to not always worry about ensuring you have two heavy rims filled with glass hanging off your face all day. Then there’s the additional concern of leaving them behind when you’ve had to take them off for whatever reason.

Alternatives

The only real alternative to not needing to wear glasses is contact lenses. These, for me, weren’t really an option, though, as I had tried them many times with no success. Most likely because some people was quite squeamish when it came to going anywhere near their actual eye balls and they fell sick every time they have to put them in. Natural reactions are to flinch and move away when your finger get close to your eye. As you can imagine, contacts therefore are not a suitable alternative to wearing glasses.

The only other option, then, was laser eye surgery. Gulp. And probably not a great idea for someone who is squeamish when it comes to the eyes.

Laser eye surgery has been around for quite some time now, and has become such a low risk and relatively easy-to-execute procedure that it can be conducted relatively quickly, and recovery is limited to around a month. However, if you look around you’ll find generally the procedure is still rather invasive. The most common practice – LASIK, or “laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis” – involves having flaps cut by the laser on each eye, and the shape of the cornea altered in order to “correct” you of your bad vision. This is not an option for those that are a little delicate when it comes to touching the eye area. And for this rather gruesome-sounding reason, many glasses-wearers are put off going under the laser to rid them of their glasses for life.and then there’s also plenty of myths surrounding the procedure that still exist from yesteryear, which doesn’t help with peoples’ perceptions, even now. As pointed out by a Professor, here are 16 of the most common myths associated with laser eye surgery in general:

1. it’s still very new and the field is still developing so it’s worth waiting

2. It doesn’t work very well; you still need glasses after the procedure

3. It cannot correct long-sightedness

4. It cannot correct astigmatism

5. It cannot correct the need for reading glasses as you get older – Presbyopia

6. You could end up blind

7. It hurts

8. If you blink or move during the procedure it can go wrong

9. If something goes wrong there is nothing that can be done

10. It doesn’t last very long and needs redoing

11. We don’t know about the long-term safety

12. Prescription has to be stable

13. If you get a cataract later on in life, you can’t have that done anymore

14. Contact lenses are safer than laser eye surgery

15. Night vision is harmed by laser eye surgery (it can be fixed by laser eye surgery)

16. My prescription is too high to be corrected (98 percent of all prescriptions can be corrected)

And guess what. None of these are true.

There’s one innovation shaking up the laser eye surgery industry now that’s changing all this, however; a new type of less invasive surgery that means its completed in a matter of minutes, and recovery is faster and less irksome than ever. And I know, because I have had it done myself.The innovation I’m talking about is Small Incision Lenticule Extraction surgery. Also known as ‘keyhole’ laser eye surgery, it’s the latest innovation to come out of the eye care industry. Pioneered by Carl Zeiss Meditec it’s touted as “the next generation” in laser eye surgery. The cutting-edge procedure is much less invasive than traditional methods and it also allows correction of even higher myopic prescriptions than was previously possible.

During the procedure, eye anesthetic drops are used to completely numb the eye, and the state-of-the-art Carl Zeiss VisuMax laser places a series of precise pulses in the centre of the cornea with extraordinary 3D placement accuracy. These pulses form bubbles that are less than 1/100th the width of a human hair, and which outline the tissue that needs to be removed to effectively change the shape of the cornea.

The laser then creates a tiny connecting tunnel through which the surgeon draws out this tissue. No flap is created like in conventional laser eye surgery, so the healing time is much faster and thus safer, with the procedure taking a matter of minutes.

My experience

The surgery is completed in around 13 minutes, and that’s with a break in the middle due to my panicking a little when your vision turned to white after the first eye is done.  Not only is the patient experience greatly enhanced, as there is less surgical manipulation of the eye – making it less invasive than traditional laser eye surgery – but it also makes vision correction available to people who would have previously been told that they were unsuitable candidates.

Post-op pop

While this surgery is pain free and over before you know it, the usual recovery still applies. Although this is much less intense than after regular, non-Small Incision Lenticule Extraction laser eye surgery procedures, and you are back to normal in a matter of days, not weeks.

Most patients’ vision is 80 percent better instantly and reaches 100 percent within a few days. This is what givesSmall Incision Lenticule Extraction its excellent appraisal, as it helps people overcome the fears associated with the procedure because – depending on your prescription and vision – some you could literally be back in the office the next day after surgery.

For the first four hours after surgery you can’t open your eyes, you just have to rest, apart from when applying two different kind of drops, which has to be every 30 minutes. After these four hours you can open your eyes again, and drops must be applied every hour for the rest of the day. Two anesthetic drops much be applied four times a day for the week after, and protective goggles which stop you from causing damage to your eyes while sleeping, must be worn every night.

The astigmatism is gone, short sightedness disappears completely and you’ll have 20/20 vision.

Therefore Small Incision Lenticule Extraction laser eye surgery, it definitely has a super fast healing process, especially compared to what patients of regular laser eye surgery had. After the first few days you will see better and after the first week, you no longer have to keep applying drops, you didn’t need to wear the goggles for bed anymore and your sight is brilliant