Gailey Eye Clinic

The word LASIK was originally an acronym for Laser Assisted in situ Keratomileusis and in that name you can see that it is a procedure, Keratomileusis, that began before lasers and was later improved by use of a laser.

The man known as the "father of modern refractive surgery", meaning LASIK, was a Spanish eye doctor. His life’s work focused on how the eye focuses and on how to improve vision by changing how the eye’s cornea focuses.

Keratomileusis
Jose Barraquer took the first steps towards LASIK in the 1950s. He was living in Colombia at the time and working on ways to improve people’s vision by modifying the cornea – the clear front covering that is a type of lens and bends incoming light. His first approach was to remove a thin layer of the cornea, freeze it, reshape it on a lathe by shaving off tiny pieces, and then stitch it back in place.

By thus changing the corneal curvature, he improved vision. He named this procedure Keratomileusis, from Greek words meaning "cornea" and "carving". For the "carving", he invented a blade called a microkeratome ("small corneal knife").

"in situ"
With no calculator, and certainly no wavefront technology, he worked out his treatment plans with pen and paper. Later he devised a computer-controlled lathe that was more precise than his hand work. But the main problem was that freezing corneal tissue damaged it. Barraquer was a teacher with students worldwide and later he worked with one of them named Luis Ruiz. Together they devised a way to modify corneal curvature without removing it – modifying it “in situ”, in place. This led to the modern LASIK flap, which is folded back for surgery and then replaced over the treated area.

Laser Assisted
Meanwhile, an Indian-born IBM employee, Rangaswamy Srinivasan, was studying how organic matter responds to ultraviolet light. He worked through the 1960s and 1970s and in the 1980s began using his pulsed excimer laser to etch plastics. Many industries took this up and have given us inkjet printers, for example; but Srinivasan and eye doctors worldwide began using this laser for vision correction.

In 1988 the first PRK procedure (Photorefractive Keratectomy) was done in Germany. For the first time, a laser was used to successfully correct vision. Instead of a corneal flap, surface tissue was removed entirely and allowed to grow back after treatment. PRK is still offered by many LASIK surgeons for those whose corneas are too thin for LASIK. It is also called Advanced Surface Ablation.

In 1995 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the excimer laser for treating myopia of up to -6.00 diopters. In 1997, the FDA approved it for treating astigmatism; and in 1998, the VISX (now AMO) CustomVue LASIK system was approved to treat hyperopia.

Custom LASIK is now the most precise and sophisticated vision correction the world has ever seen. At the Gailey Eye Clinic, we use the Allegretto Wavelight Eye-Q Laser system which gives superb vision correction, far more precise than any correction achieved by glasses or contact lenses. Please contact our LASIK office if you would like to know more about laser vision correction and whether you would be a good candidate for it.