What Happens If My Eye Moves During Laser Surgery?
February 2, 2017
This is a question I struggled with as a surgeon for a very long time as I always felt that laser manufacturers couldn’t give me a good answer to that question. The eye can move in so many ways during surgery. There are the traditional ways that we can think of like the up, down, right, and left ways. But there are also movements of the eye like cyclotorsion and eye bobbing where there can be an impact on what the laser is treating during those eye movements.
Over the years of practicing laser eye surgery, I used many different laser systems that tried to capture the eye movement as well as possible to ensure the laser treatment is only applied to the right areas of the cornea. But there were always precautions that required significant patient cooperation during the process. While thankfully I had no complications from performing laser surgery that relates to eyes “wandering off”, as a corneal specialist I had been referred to many patients that were unfortunately left with irregular vision as a result of that happening. While I can’t say why that happened as I wasn’t there during the treatment by their surgeons, my feeling is that it’s because some of those laser systems could not really track the eye as well as they claimed to.
It is for that reason that we invested in the best 6th generation excimer platform for eye tracking called the Schwind. It is the only system in the market that can track the eye in 6 dimensions! As a result of that, the laser system has truly an incredible ability to track the eye and ensure it gives the safest possible way to deliver laser treatment to the eye. It is also for that reason that we find that patients with high levels of astigmatism can get excellent vision outcomes after laser treatment with the Schwind because it can track their astigmatism with incredible precision as it is being treated.
Video: Schwind laser’s capability to track eye movement in 6 dimensions to deliver maximum precision is shown in this animation.
At Clarity Laser Vision, we take a “no compromise” approach when it comes to bringing only the most advanced and proven diagnostic and treatment technologies available for our patients.