Laser eye surgery is mainly used to treat shortsightedness and farsightedness. However, these two visual impairments are not the only ones that can be treated with laser eye surgery. Astigmatism as a third form of refractive error that can also be corrected with laser treatment. Lasers used to treat astigmatism appeared ten years ago. Today, there are even follow-up lasers that have been approved for the treatment of astigmatism. Actually, LASIK surgery is usually done to treat astigmatism. This can significantly reduce patients’ need for thick, bulky glasses or problematic contact lenses traditionally worn by astigmatic patients.
Surgical treatment of astigmatism
After ten years of development, the surgical treatment of astigmatism has matured to some extent. In particular, LASIK for the correction of astigmatism was common and routine. People with more than 80% astigmatism can be treated with LASIK surgery. Higher degrees of astigmatism are also expected to be corrected with great technological advances in the future. In general, LASIK treatment of astigmatism is similar to laser eye surgery used to correct nearsightedness and farsightedness. The surgeon will reshape and reshape the cornea, which performs most of the focusing force on the human eye.
In other words, LASIK for astigmatism will make the patient’s cornea more spherical and LASIK for myopia will make it flatter. This tells us the basic principle of treating astigmatism with eye surgery. In other words, the surface of the cornea will become more spherical after the operation. Specifically, a special laser beam pattern will be used to remove certain single-sided corneal tissue. This method aims to make the cornea more uniform and spherical. At the same time, it slightly flattens the cornea, correcting myopia to some extent. If the patient has irregular astigmatism, further qualification from the surgeon is required. In general, LASIK is safe for the correction of astigmatism and maintains a high success rate.
