Not All Custom LASIK is CustomVue

Submitted by Dr. Dean Dornic on Sun 07/12/2009 - 09:46

Raleigh area LASIK candidates can be confused by advertisements for “custom LASIK”. Patients considering LASIK and who understand that the results of custom LASIK are in general, better than conventional LASIK, may mistakenly believe that all providers who offer custom LASIK are offering the same service.

Unfortunately, some providers of wavefront optimized LASIK advertise their procedure as “custom”. This is a distortion of the original meaning of custom LASIK which refers to wavefront guided LASIK.

Although a thorough understanding of the difference would take much more room than can be spent on this blog, needless to say, the visual performance of wavefront guided LASIK tends to be better than wavefront optimized. This has been born out by numerous studies and is the reason that NASA and the Department of Defense prefers wavefront guided LASIK.

Vision problems can be categorized into lower order ones (nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism) and higher order aberrations:  the type that cause visual distortions, night time halos and starbursts. Wavefront optimized LASIK simply means there is an effort made not to induce new aberrations. Wavefront guided LASIK means that there is an effort to correct any preexisting distortions /aberrations and is the reason some LASIK patients will note that there vision is actually better after LASIK than it was before with their best glasses or contact lenses.

Raleigh area LASIK candidates may want to investigate data submitted to the FDA on LASIK. They will discover that the LASIK technology with the highest ever rate of 20/20 results was accomplished by CustomVue on a VISX Star laser and is the same technology employed here at the Laser Eye Center of Carolina.