I used to be a researcher at U. Miami and then Duke doing laser-eye tissue interaction research while I was a student. What I can tell you is this: every doctor and PhD I asked all say they personally would not get the procedure done on themselves. There is only so much animal research you can do. There is not a perfect animal model that mimics the human eye exactly...as a result we are performing these procedures on human "guinea pigs". The new procedure LASIK is promising in that it first creates a flap and then the laser cuts underneath. The reason this is crucial is that before in PRK, they were cutting directly on the cornea and then into the stroma...the superfical cells are important and blasting them away caused wouund healing that sometimes resulted in glare and haziness. With LASIK, the superficial cells are part of the flap and the laser only cuts the stroma....resulting is better healing. LASIK, however, is relatively new and there is not too much long term data on it.

• RE: RE: RE: Laser surgery - BillF - May 2, 2000 - 14:01 UTC