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Patients are prepped for the procedure. They’re given the opportunity to take a relaxing medicine like a Valium prior to proceeding. After about 20 minutes they are then brought into the laser room. Now patients are in the room for about 15 minutes, but understand that they’re not being operated on for 15 minutes. The laser treatment times are extremely short. For an example, the longest treatment time would be about 20 seconds with the laser. The first part of the procedure involves making a corneal flap in the front part of the eye. If you think of the cornea is being about a half a millimeter in thickness, the first laser will create a thin plane in the front part of that front window. Part of the eye. It goes about say 15% depth. Once that flap is created, the patient’s moved under the other laser, which is called an excimer laser and after the flap is elevated, the permanent layers of the cornea are exposed. The excimer laser then essentially etches a lens into the patient’s cornea. Once the eximer lasers done it’s treatment. We reposition the corneal flap, and the procedure is then complete. We do one eye at a time. We first make the flap with the first eye, and then we do the same thing with the second eye. It’s then that the patient’s moved under the second laser.
