Lasik is the most common method that is used by patients for the refractive eye surgery, and creating a flap is the first step in lasik eye surgery. There are methods to create a flap, and they can be divided into mainly to types, thin flap and thick flap. Patient who is considering undergoing a lasik eye surgery should first choose one of them as part of the eye surgery procedure.
The thick flap is cut when traditional lasik is carried out, in which the eye surgeon use a scalpel to cut the flap in the blade microkeratome procedure. The precision and accuracy is all controlled by the hand of the surgeon, so the risk of getting complications is increased though it does cost less. With the development of lasik eye surgery technology, this type of flap lasik is used less and less, only a few eye doctors still offer thick flap lasik. And most of the patients choose advanced technology considering the risk factors associated with the creating flap procedure.
The thin flap is cut by laser under the guidance of computer system. The thin flap lasik is also called TF-Lasik or Mirco-Lasik. In the most advanced procedure of IntraLasik a flap with the thickness of about 130 microns is created by laser with the WaveFront guiding system. The precision is much higher then the traditional lasik eye surgery. What more, it can create monovision, in which both nearsightedness and far sightedness can be corrected.
The frequency of occurring side effects in patience has decreased considerably with the development of the lasik eye surgery technology since it was first carried out. However, no matter which type of flap lasik is used, the complications such as sensitivity to light, night blindness and the halo effect around lights still occur sometimes after eye surgery.
