Wavefront Guided Lasik Denver

Wavefront was originally developed for use in high-powered telescopes to reduce distortions in space. First, a narrow ray of eye-safe infrared laser light is passed into the eye and directed to the retina. The light is then reflected off the retina, passed back through the lens and cornea where it is collected and analyzed for optical distortion and deviations and compared to the "ideal." It creates a fingerprint of vision - a map of irregularities inherent to your visual system. This technology uncovers specific characteristics of your optical system never before measured using standard methods for glasses and contact lenses. To create the treatment plan, these patterns are compared to an ideal Wavefront map, and the computer designs a personalized treatment plan that is unique for your visual specifications.

Our practice holds a strong commitment to helping people overcome their dependency on glasses or contacts. Most of the blur in patients who wear glasses or contacts is due to lower order irregularities or aberrations. These are known as defocus - which includes myopia and hyperopia - and astigmatism. It is the higher order aberrations that until now, we have not been able to explain, quantify or address. It is these nuances or subtle differences in our visual system that impact on many quality of vision issues often discussed following laser vision correction. Wavefront technology is therefore innovative because it potentially can improve not only your visual acuity measured by the standard 20/20 eye chart, but also your ability to see in situations of variable lighting, dim lighting, scattered light and those requiring fine detail. Treatment of these nuances then should result in a reduced risk of post-LASIK complications, such as glare, halos and difficulty with night vision.

Traditional LASIK treats only lower-order aberrations, while custom Wavefront LASIK treats both lower- and higher-order aberrations.

Exit surveys of patients treated with custom would seem to back this up. In one clinical study, four times as many participants reported being very satisfied with their night vision after the procedure as compared to their night vision before with glasses or contacts. This also seems to be true when compared with traditional LASIK treatments.

Custom Wavefront LASIK trials also showed a greater chance of achieving 20/20 vision and a greater chance of achieving better than 20/20 vision. Six months after the custom procedures in one study, more than 74% percent of the participants saw 20/16 or better.

There was also a reduced chance of losing a line of best corrected vision, a reduced chance of losing visual quality or contrast sensitivity, and a reduced chance of night-vision disturbances and glare. Potential also exists for custom Wavefront LASIK to treat those people who have lost best-corrected vision from previous refractive surgery.

For these reasons, although patients have been very happy with traditional treatments for years, if you are highly critical of your vision, have a prescription within the approved range and can find a way to justify the additional cost, you should strongly consider custom Wavefront LASIK as an option.

Custom-guided/driven treatments are available for a wide range of myopic, hyperopic, and astigmatic prescriptions. They were also approved by the FDA for LASIK delivery. As such, while the use of custom-guided treatments for surface procedures is available, they are considered off-label but can be treated if your surgeon feels that it is appropriate to do so. For more information regarding our Wavefront LASIK procedure please feel free to contact us.