If you are looking at this article, it is most likely that you are contemplating whether to undergo either PRK or LASIK to help you regain perfect or close to perfect vision. And it is also very likely that you do not like eyeglasses (well, most of us don’t.) But the key factor is that since both of these procedures are relatively expensive, ranging from the high hundreds to the thousands for just one eye, thus it really is important that you choose the “correct” procedure to undergo.
Before we can actually see which of these procedures are “better”, we should go more in depth to what these procedures do to your eyes to help you regain your vision. Let us first look at LASIK. LASIK, which is short for Laser- Assisted In Situ Keratomileusus, or more commonly just simply known as laser surgery, very simply put, uses a laser to reconstruct tiny tissues in your eyes to regain perfect vision.
Imagine this: You peel open an orange at the surface, but instead of plucking the whole orange open, you cut a flap at the surface, and use a laser to re craft the insides of the orange to make it look better. LASIK is basically the same thing. It cuts a flap at the surface of your eyes and reshapes the insides of your eye to make light converge clearly onto your retina to make you see better. Then you wear contact lenses for a few days for your “flap” to heal. And then you are good to go.
Continuing the same analogy of an orange, PRK is a very similar treatment in nature, but this time it’s slightly different. Instead of cutting a flap at the orange skin and burn up the orange sacs inside to reshape it, you now redesign the orange skin to make it look better. In the same aspect, PRK redesigns the cornea, which is the topmost surface of your eye to correct the refraction of light thus curing you of shortsightedness.
But even as the two procedures are very similar, there are key differences between them, some of which is stated below:
- PRK is normally used for low to middle degrees of shortsightedness while LASIK is used for middle to high degrees of shortsightedness.
- PRK normally causes a whole deal of discomfort after the eye operations, which includes things such as itching of the eye as when the cornea is reshaped (the orange skin) it is a very reformative and thus an incredibly itchy process, making PRK more undesirable than LASIK in this respect, which discomforts only lasts for a few days at most.
Even with these two main differences, PRK and LASIK are similar in a lot of ways. However, one similarity stands out; that they are relatively expensive. LASIK and PRK would cost you thousands for both eyes. This alone should make most of the people who are not willing to pay such a price for perfect vision look for alternative cures.