Astigmatism And Laser Eye Surgery

Astigmatism is among the common vision structural disorders which may occur on its own or with hypermetropia or myopia. An Astigmatism causes the blurred or the distorted vision at both distant as well as the near ranges. The condition can be accompanied by headaches as well as eyestrain. It occurs if the outer lens of the eye called cornea changes shape from the natural spherical shape to the elliptical shape as the surface of football or a rugby ball due to which the light that enters the eye get refracted unevenly and ultimately splits in the two points of focus that should be a single clear image at the retina that is at the back of an eye. Thus the cornea of an Astigmatic eye generally has two curves in which the one is steep and the other is flat. In the regular astigmatism the meridians that have the two different curves are situated 90 degrees apart whereas in the irregular astigmatism, these two meridians are located somewhere else or there may be even more than the two meridians.

People generally inherit the defect of an Astigmatism through their parents where they are born with oblong cornea or it may even be caused by any injury or the ocular disease that can be the keratoconus which is the one that causes the gradual thinning of cornea of the eye.

An Astigmatism can be treated by using the eyeglasses or the contact lenses. It is well treated by the laser surgery.

The method through which the surgeons correct the defect of astigmatism in laser surgery is to flatten a steeper curve of the cornea of the eye that helps in decreasing the oblong shape of the cornea and hence creates more spherical shape. In this process the laser pulses are accurately passed to the corneal tissue at the axis of steeper curve. The laser surgery allows the eye to focus the light rays properly by decreasing an angle of a sharper curve that contributes to the spherical shape of the cornea which finally results in the clear vision.

The major advantage of the laser eye surgery is that this is the single treatment made to treat astigmatism which actually addresses the major source of the defect instead of just treating the symptoms. This surgery has the most comfortable one as it takes the shortest period of time for recovery. The process end for around half an hour only. After the surgery the epithelium heals in about two days and it is advised to apply the antibiotic eye drops in order to resist any infection.

By: Matt Miller

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Matt Miller runs a San Diego Lasik informational site where users can request into form local San Diego Lasik doctors.