Healing Issues

HEALING FLUCTUATIONS: During the healing process, you may notice some initial scratching and burning. Your vision tends to fluctuate for a couple of weeks before beginning to stabilize.

Glare and Haloes. These are most noticeable around lights and especially at night. They are more persistent for the first few weeks and tend to fade away over several months. Glare and haloes are more common with large pupils and high prescriptions. Rarely is it pronounced enough to interfere with driving. The Custom Wavefront technology can reduce and sometimes eliminate persistent night vision distortion.

Inflammation. Inflammation is controlled with steroid drops that you will be instructed to use after your surgery. The frequency would be increased if any post-operative inflammation was present. Uncontrolled inflammation can affect the healing dynamics of the cornea and could result in over or under correction.

Infection. This is very unlikely given today's extremely potent antibiotics. A serious infection, left untreated, could result in scarring, which may permanently decrease vision, or even worse, cause loss of vision.

Epithelial Ingrowth. As the flap heals, the cornea's "surface skin" or epithelium grows back across the edge of the incision. Sometimes, the surface cells grow down into the incision and under the flap. Although this is invisible to the naked eye, it can occasionally interfere with vision, and possibly the flap would need to be re-lifted, the cells rinsed away, and the flap laid back down. This is more an inconvenience than a complication. This occurs only extremely rarely with the IntraLase, and is most commonly seen with the use of the older mechanical microkeratome to cut the flap, or with an enhancement.