After Lasik

I’ve been wearing contact lenses for a few years now. I like them better than wearing glasses and I’m thinking about LASIK but am not ready to do that yet. Many other people wear contacts and there are probably a few people you know that wear them along with some that you may not know wear them. Since so many people wear contacts, there’s a lot of competition amongst contact lens manufacturers and you can really get some great deals or even free contact lenses. I’ll explain how.

The first thing you want to do is see your eye doctor or eye care professional. I go to an eye doctor at a local, well known department store but when I was a child, I went to an Optometrist. I even got a prescription for glasses and had that prescription filled when I was on a trip to India, so you can get quality eye care anywhere really. Tell your eye doctor that you would like to wear contacts. A prescription for contacts is different than a prescription for glasses and that makes sense since contacts are right on your eyes and glasses are farther from your eyes.

There are pros and cons to wearing contact lenses. Putting them in and taking them out can take some getting used to. Some people need to use re-wetting drops during the day and that can also take some getting used to. You have to take good care of your contact, too. The great thing is you don’t have to keep cleaning your glasses, you can better enjoy most sporting activities and many people look better without glasses. Oh, and you can wear normal sunglasses, too!

When you get your contact lens prescription, your eye doctor can order free, trial lenses for you. You’ll often have the choice of several different contact lens manufacturers like:

Acuvue
Durasoft
Air Optix
Focus Dalies
Purevision
Cooper Vision
O2 Optix
Johnson & Johnson
Bausch & Lomb

You should order free, trial pairs from several of the manufacturers available to you. Each pair may only be good for 30 days, but with enough trial pairs of contacts, you can get free contacts for several months. During this time, take notes about how you like each one. Some things to write down are:

Did the contacts feel comfortable?
Were they easy to put in and take out?
Did you need to use re-wetting drops often?
Did you have clearer vision with these lenses compared to others?

If you have astigmatism then you can still wear contacts. I do. I wear toric contact lenses, which have small weights in them so that they line up correctly on my eyes. With toric lenses, you may have to go through several sets of free, trial lenses and wear them only about a week because your eye doctor will need to adjust where that small weight is so that the contacts sit correctly in your eyes. I went through about 4 trial pairs myself.

There’s also many people that are interested in getting non corrective colored contacts. These are also called cosmetic contact lenses and are really fun to wear. You can wear them when you go out on the town or for every day use, too. They are available in a variety of different colors for people with light and dark colored eyes. You can either just go for colored contacts that enhance the color of your eyes or for something more dramatic. Many people will get the more dramatic ones as a great addition to their Halloween costume.

Again, since there is a lot of competition for contacts, you can very easily take advantage of free contact lens offers. It’s good to do this so that you find a brand of contacts that suits you and ones you are comfortable with. Your eyes are very important, so you want to find the best ones that you can. Take your time, keep some notes about each manufacturer and then make the best decision. And remember, if you take good care of your contacts, they’ll take good care of you.

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LASIK is by far the most prevalent and safest refractive surgery procedure. It has been employed to treat a host of visual anomalies. Since it’s a surgery, people often harbor a false belief that LASIK is a painful procedure. In fact, LASIK is a relatively painless technique, and what the patient experiences during and after the surgery can be categorized as mild discomfort rather than pain.

LASIK is performed with the patient awake and mobile, and this certainly corroborates that the operation is relatively painless. The surgeon typically administers a mild sedative (for instance Valium) and anesthetic eye drops. LASIK involves creation of a flap of corneal tissue. This hinged flap may be created with a microkeratome (a surgical blade) or a femtosecond laser. During this initial step of flap formation, the patient may experience a little bit of pressure on the eye.

In the following step, the flap is folded back to reveal the middle section of the cornea, in order to make way for precise ablation by the excimer laser. Then the flap is repositioned to allow natural healing. Upon completion of the surgery, the patient may experience discomfort, scratchiness and irritation, akin to the sensation of wearing an uncomfortable contact lens. Such irritable sensation can be soothed with the aid of eye drops, and it normally wears off within a few hours after surgery.

Since the laser ablation is performed the middle section of the cornea and under the LASIK flap, the cornea does not register the fact that it has been surgically operated. As the wound response is subdued, the patient experiences speedy visual recovery and almost no pain.

However, as with any surgery, LASIK has associated complications that may force the patient to bear greater discomfort after surgery. A few of such nagging complications include dry eyes, visual acuity fluctuation, halos or starbursts around light sources at night, double vision, light sensitivity, and several flap related problems.

All in all, LASIK is a safe and efficacious procedure, which is virtually painless. Though the patient may experience mild discomfort due to potential complications, the complication rate itself is quite meager. If presented with the question of whether LASIK hurts or not, I would certainly say that it’s a painless procedure.

Finding a LASIK surgeon that you are confident about will be able to give you more information about laser eye surgery.

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Read through my list of recommended lubricant eye drops to banish those dry itchy eyes forever.

Remember not all eyes are the same so don’t expect all drops to be the same…!

1. Blink Contacts Eye Drops 10ml – By Blink

First choice for most practitioners, a very ‘run-of-the-mill’ drop to help with dry eyes. If you’re someone who’s been spending a lot of time at work glued to the VDU or someone who’s been over-wearing their contact lenses then this is a good drop to start with.

I’d recommend using these 3 to 4 times a day.

2. Clinitas Hydrate Eye Gel 10g – By Altacor

This gel is popular with some of my patients who have undergone Laser Eye Surgery where dryness is very common for the first 6 months.

I’d recommend using this gel twice a day. Once in the morning and once at night.

3. Clinitas Soothe Lubricant Eye Drops 20×0.5ml – By Altacor

These single use vials are very handy to carry around in your bag or pocket and are a good alternative to the Clinitas Hydrate Gel. Patients who find the Hydrate Gel too thin have preferred this thicker version.

4. Hycosan – By Hycosan

For those of you who have poor manual dexterity this lubricant drop has a patented one-way delivery system to instill one single dose into the eye. No more drops running down the side of your face!

Some Laser Eye Surgery patients swear by this lubricant after they’ve tried all the others (Blink, Clinitas Hydrate, Soothe..etc) especially middle-aged women who are undergoing menopause. Hormones can play a key part in dry eye related problems.

5. Actimist Eye Spray – By Optrex

Saving the best till last. The easiest and most convenient way of refreshing your eyes. Spray it on closed eye lids for instant relief. Easy!

Honourable Mention – Systane

A very good solid all rounder which is quite popular with patients who complain that the Blink doesn’t last long enough and find the Hydrate too thick.

So there you have it. My top lubricant eye drops recommendation which I find work best in practice in alleviating the symptoms of Itchy Dry Eye.

Note: All these eye drops can be bought ‘Over-The-Counter’ meaning they do not require a prescription.

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Stephen discusses his Z-LASIK Crystal Plus treatment at Focus (Laser Eye Surgery in London) one week after his treatment. His vision is better than 20/20 and he tells us why he went ahead with laser eye surgery and why he chose Focus.

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We’ll match any price, because the difference isn’t in the price, the difference is in the surgeon.

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The purpose of this article is to simply describe what you need to do to buy your first pair of glasses online. I will not recommend particular retailers, as you can find that info in several of my other articles and also check out the links on the right of this page. Purchasing eyewear online seems daunting at first. If you’re like me, purchasing and fitting prescription glasses always seemed like a complex procedure best left to professionals. The truth is, if you know your prescription and have your existing rx glasses handy, it is really quite simple to purchase glasses online.

The Seven Critical Numbers

First, find your current prescription. I keep mine in the health file in my filing cabinet. If you can’t find your prescription, visit wherever you last had your eyes examined and request a copy. Your optician, optometrist, or ophthalmologist is required by law to release your eyewear prescription to you. You now need to make note of a few critical pieces of information from your prescription (see example above–click to enlarge). Among other information, you should see three columns on your prescription–sphere, cylinder, and axis.

In the example above, these are abbreviated SPH. CYL. and AXIS. These three columns will have two rows, Right and Left. In the prescription above, this is simply abbreviated R and L. Many doctors instead use the latin abbreviations, which are OD and OS. OD means right eye and OS means left eye. Jot down a quick copy of the six numbers or simply keep your prescription handy. These six critical numbers define how your lens will be carved. Any online eyewear retailer will ask for the input of these six numbers.

In addition to these six numbers, there is one more critical number, the Pupillary Distance, or PD. This is a measure, in millimeters, of the space between your eyes. In the example prescription above, you’ll see the Pupillary Distance of the patient is 62. Jot down this number also, it is the seventh of your seven critical numbers.

A Final Measurement

A somewhat less critical number is your temple length. If you’re lucky, you’ll also see a temple length and bridge size in your prescription. If not, don’t sweat it, you can figure it out yourself. The temple length describes the length of the two bars that connect the glasses to your ears. It is measured from where the 90-degree curve from your lens structure to the side bars (temples) begins to the very end of the temple, including the curve. It is not measured from the flex point of the temples, because the “stub” between the flex point and lens structure is not a standard size.

Now, take out some measuring tape (preferably the type of tape used for fitting clothes and sewing, as it is very flexible) and measure an existing pair of glasses that fit comfortably. An average temple length for men is 135mm or 145mm. For women, 130mm to 140mm is standard. If your tape only has inches, measure to the nearest eighth or sixteenth and multiply that number by 25.4 to get the measurement in millimeters. Temple lengths are generally available in 5mm increments, such as 130, 135, 140, 145, etc. At most online eyeglasses stores, temple length is shown within a frame description and is not customizable. Therefore, you need to find a frame with an appropriate temple size. This sometimes varies if you are at a site specializing in designer glasses, where you have the option to input your own temple size.

Honestly, temple size is not a huge deal. I have one pair of glasses with 135mm temples and another with 140mm temples. Both pairs fit comfortably. If for some reason you can’t come up with a temple measurement, don’t let that stop you from making an eyewear purchase online. Instead, simply choose 140mm temples if you are a man and 135mm temples if you are a woman. Chances are, this length will fit comfortably.

What’s your Style?

Armed with your seven critical numbers and an idea on your temple length, start browsing the myriad of online retailers. Pick out some favorite frames and open the individual pages in separate tabs or windows of your web browser. Similar to trying on glasses at a standard retailer, you need to figure out if the frames you like are appropriate for your face. You might visit my post on the topic of face shape. If you have a nice oval face, you’re in luck, most any pair will look on you. If you have strong, angular features, a rounded or rimless pair will look god on you. If you have a very round face, choose a rectangular or hexagonal pair of glasses. If you just want a basic pair of professional glasses, go with titanium rimless.

Using your trusty measuring tape, you can compare other measurements of your existing glasses with what you are looking at online. The bridge measurement describes the distance between lenses, the height describes the distance from the lowest point on the front of the frame to the highest point, and the lens describes the distance between the end of the bridge and the beginning of the temple. Some retailers also offer free virtual try-on. This service, which I describe in will allow you to upload a picture and place a variety of frame types on your face.

Place your Order

So you’ve found the perfect pair of frames. Begin the checkout process. You should see boxes where you can enter your prescription information (the seven critical numbers). This will sometimes be in a table format similar to your prescription, or it may be a simple list. You’ll also have the option to choose from a variety of coatings and add-ons. If you will be wearing your glasses day-in and day-out, I recommend choosing the anti-scratch and anti-reflective coatings. These really do make a difference and ease night driving (anti-reflective) and the longevity of being able to see clearly through your lens (anti-scratch). You can add on the UV coating if you wish, though it isn’t critical. Photochromatic tinting (aka “transition lens”) is also an option. Personally, I prefer buying a separate pair of prescription sunglasses, but that is up to you.

If you only wear glasses occasionally (maybe as a supplement to contact lenses), or are just purchasing a pair of Rx sunglasses that won’t be worn every waking hour, you might choose to save money by skipping on the extras. If you are buying a pair for your accident-prone child, skimping on the extras might not be such a bad idea either. Avoid coatings and other add-ons will also allow you to get a great pair of prescription glasses for well under $40. After you’ve placed your order, you’ll typically wait about 2-to-3 weeks for your glasses to be custom carved and delivered. The finished product will typically include a hard case and a soft cloth for lens cleaning.

In this I show a video of the exact product received from a popular online eyewear retailer.

Side Note One: “Help, I don’t have a prescription!”

If it has been a long time since your eyes have been examined, or if you just can’t get a hold of your prescription, it’s time to go visit an optometrist. While your neighborhood optometrist may charge $100 or more for a simple examination, discount stores like Wal-Mart, or optometrists in working-class neighborhoods will often offer an eye exam for $40 or less. Grab your yellow pages and start making phone calls. Chances are, you’ll get the best price if you find an optometrist who has many customers without vision insurance.

Side Note Two: “How can it be so cheap?”

The price difference between online eyewear and glasses bought from a traditional retailer, or even Wal-Mart or Costco, is startling. An identical pair of titanium frames might cost $60 online and $220 at Wal-Mart. How can this be? What about the quality? I will categorically state that the quality of glasses received from the majority of online retailers is equal to or exceeds the quality found at your neighborhood eyewear shop or optometrist. The price differential comes from a number of factors, including the relative obscurity of online eyewear purchases, the fact that highly paid optometrists do not spend one-on-one time with the eyewear purchaser, and the fact that insurance companies are typically not involved with online eyewear purchases, thereby discouraging inflated prices.

Give it a try. I guarantee you’ll be satisfied with your online eyewear purchase if you follow the steps outlined in this article.

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Crazy Contact Lenses – Offers You With The Weirdest Look

Crazy contact lenses give you the weirdest kind of look that you can ever think of. Hitherto, actors and actresses of horror movies and serials used these contact lenses to give a nightmarish experience to the audiences. But these days the crazy contact lenses are popularly used by laymen to give themselves the spookiest look.

Why wear crazy contact lenses?

The crazy contact lenses are used solely for the purpose of style. They are zero powered contact lenses and are mainly designed to provide fun and entertainment. So you do not need any prescription from opticians to get these lenses. You can simply visit the contact lenses stores and choose the best crazy contact lenses for yourself. However, if you suffer from any type of eye irritation or eye inflammation after you wear the crazy contact lenses, immediately consult an optician to avoid further eye damages.

Varieties of crazy contact lenses

The crazy contact lenses are available in various designs. This type of contact lenses range from designs of yellow cat eyes, striped zebra style, flags/ cross designs, colorful spirals to sunshine lenses. However, you can easily choose the contact lenses from the following two types:

* Monthly crazy contact lenses – these lenses are flexible and you can wear them for a period of one month or 30 wearing times.

* Standard crazy contact lenses – these lenses ensure maximum comfort as you can wear them for an extended period of 18 months.

When you choose any of these crazy contact lenses and start wearing them, you should regularly cleanse and rinse them in disinfecting lens-cleaning solutions.

Tips to experience the best of crazy contact lenses

The opticians and contact lenses manufacturers always specify on perfect caring of contact lenses. So when you wear a pair of crazy contact lenses, you should also abide by the following tips to experience the comfort of the best contact lenses:

* Do not apply make-ups and perfumes, lotions and sprays to avoid any damage to the crazy contact lenses.

* Use prescribed solutions for cleaning your crazy contact lenses. Do not use tap water, saliva or homemade solutions.

* Before handling your crazy contact lenses, wash your hands with soap water to ensure maximum safety.

Use the cleaning solutions particularly as prescribed by your doctor, for it helps to retain the spooky color of the crazy contact lenses.

So wear the crazy contact lenses to feel different, look unique and give a go-crazy shock to others around you.

Halloween Contact Lenses – Go Crazy With These Special Lenses

Make your Halloween festival on 31st October a special one by using some crazy Halloween contact lenses. Since a long time, your children had been aspiring to go insane with spooky dresses during Halloween! Right? So now is the time you give them a pleasant surprise with some go-crazy Halloween contact lenses. Watch how the insane color of their eyes match the eerie dress they are wearing. It’s even time for you parents, to treat yourself with these Halloween contact lenses.

Correct your vision and enhance your style with Halloween contact lenses

Here is good news for people who possess eye power yet desperately wants to wear Halloween contact lenses. In this case, you should consult a doctor for a proper prescription. Depending on prescribed advice, you can now buy those Halloween contact lenses, which not only help in visual correction but also give a surprising look to your eyes. If you do not possess eye power, and simply want to wear Halloween contact lenses to honor the occasion, then visit the contact lenses stores and choose some special mind- boggling Halloween contact lenses to get the spookiest look!

Different Halloween contact lenses in vogue

The Halloween contact lenses are much in vogue now. Not only do they enhance the jack o’ lantern look of the Halloween Eve’s Day, the lenses are also elaborately used by performers of horror movies and eerie television serials to give the audience a blood-chilling feel. Ranging from yellow tiger’s eye lenses, Banshee lenses, dollar sign eyes, spider web sprayed lenses, fearfully striped lenses to those of vampire red lenses, Halloween contact lenses will give you the best feel of the occasion.

Tips to use your special Halloween contact lenses

Whether you are wearing the Halloween contact lenses or your children are wearing them, you must be aware of the following tips to enjoy the best use of the lenses:

* You should get the correct contact lenses cleaning solution so that the colors do not get washed off. Rinse and disinfect the lenses regularly in these cleaning solutions.

* Never use the Halloween contact lenses of some other people. It can even cause blindness.

* Do not wear the contact lenses for more than 8 hours to avoid eye problems.

* Do not sleep, bathe or swim with Halloween contact lenses. Avoid wearing the lenses specially when you are cooking.

So next time when you choose some real crazy dresses for your Halloween special party, also buy a spooky pair of Halloween contact lenses to give a complete eerie look to yourself or your excited children.

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Many eye surgeons use the wavefront-guided VISX system, which is known as CustomVue. The Iris registration is a hardware upgrade installed on this system.

Wavefront-guided LASIK

It’s also called Custom LASIK, for good reason.

In the diagnostic stage the wavefront system takes many measurements of each cornea in tiny detail. From these, it makes 3_D maps, which it displays on the system’s computer monitor. The information contained in these maps is used to calibrate the laser for treatment.

Nobody else in the world has eyes exactly like yours. These maps are created in such tiny detail that they can’t be mistaken for anybody else’s, and the laser treatment based on them will be unique to you. It’s an entirely customized treatment.

A small Achilles’ heel in Custom LASIK

In between the time the eyes are diagnosed and mapped by Wavefront-guided LASIK, and the time of treatment, if the eyes change at all, the laser needs to be adjusted to match.

Eye movements

When you lie down for your treatment on the patient bed that’s part of the wavefront unit, you’re moving your eyes from a vertical to a horizontal orientation, and in that change, sometimes the eyes rotate, which is called cyclotorsional movement.

The eyes could make other movements too, in between the mapping stage and the treatment:

The size of the pupil can change if the ambient lighting changes

The head may turn slightly to one side

That means that the measurements done on your eyes while you were sitting will be very slightly wrong now that you’re lying down for treatment. The wavefront diagnostic information needs to be slightly modified to align the laser to the eyes’ new positions.

Previous ways of aligning treatment

Your eye surgeon needs a reference point for aligning the laser during treatment. In the past there have been two ways of setting the reference point:

1. Manual – with a sterile pen, the eye surgeon made tiny marks on the cornea to indicate where the laser would be focused during treatment. At the time of treatment, he manually positioned the patient’s head so as to line the laser up with the marks.

This method was prone to human error at times. Also, the ink used to make the marks was short-lived, drying up after a minute or so.

2. Semi-automatic – The outlines of both the pupil and the iris were used as reference points and with the eyes dilated to enlarge the pupil, tiny marks were manually made outside the iris to indicate where treatment should be focused.

This method took longer, as the eyes had to be dilated, and it also allowed human error to creep in at times.

Automatic iris registration

The outside boundary of the iris does not change, only the inside boundary when the pupil changes size. So iris registration uses the center of the pupil as the reference point, targeting the laser beam on that center, as it relates to the outside of the iris.

During treatment, the Wavefront software works with two images of your eye:

The pre-operative image contained in the 3-D map

The present-time image as you’re receiving treatment

If there’s any movement during treatment, it automatically and continuously re-matches the two images to each other, causing the laser to re-target on the prescribed treatment area.

Because of this continual automatic readjustment of the laser, your eye surgeon can treat exactly those areas which his or her diagnostic tests revealed as needing treatment.

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See lasikcomplications.com. 6 months after LASIK, 20% of patients have worse or significantly worse night vision and dryness complications from LASIK. The FDA study stopped at 6 months.

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Cataract surgery — the most performed surgery in the world — has improved markedly. This surgery has a success rate of more than 97 percent. Still, you need to take good care of your eye or eyes after surgery. The first step is putting in eye drops to prevent infection and control eye pressure.

Your eye or eyes will react to the surgery in several ways. You may have a stinging sensation, an itching sensation, a gritty feeling (your eye feels like there is sand in it), sensitivity to sunlight and bright lights. A Mayo Clinic website article, “Cataract Surgery: What You Can Expect,” describes surgery and aftercare. Do not rub your eye or press on it, warns Mayo. You may have a discharge in the corners of your eyes. To remove the discharge wipe your eye gently with a warm wash cloth. Hold the cloth over your eye gently and do not make any pointing motions.

The Cataract Surgery website, in the article “Life After Cataracts: Cataract Surgery Recover Basics,” tells patients to take prescribed medicine exactly as the doctor recommended. You can take showers after cataract surgery, the site notes, but keep your eye closed. I had cataract surgery on both eyes and lens implanted in both eyes. When I showered I kept a dry towel close at hand in case I got water or soap in my eyes.

Though my recovery was normal, I had a problem with dry eyes. I have acne rosacea and dry, gritty eyes are a symptom of it. This dryness, combined with the natural itching after cataract surgery, was bothersome, so I used artificial tears several times a day. My eye doctor approved the use of artificial tears, but said I should never use the type that gets the red out.

I also had an odd experience after my second cataract surgery and lens implant. One day, when I was in a hurry, I yanked a t-shirt over my head. I did not know the neck of the t-shit had shrunk, and it scraped against my eyes as I pulled it over my head. Thankfully, my eyes were not hurt. Though I still wear the t-shirt, I stretch the neck a bit before putting it on.

Have you heard of defensive driving? Well, you need to practice defensive living after cataract surgery and a lens implant. Guard your eyes at all times. I found this out after my husband turned over in his sleep, swung his arm over, and barely missed my eye.

Before the surgery I wore prescription sunglasses. Now I do not need them and bought a pair of over-the-counter sunglasses for every day wear. However, I have prescription eye glasses for reading. You can help your eye doctor get the best outcome from cataract surgery and a lens implant by practicing defensive living, using artificial tears if approved, taking your prescribed medicine, and putting in eye drops on schedule.

Today, I have 20/20 in both eyes and the world is a colorful place again. “Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful,” Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “for beauty is God’s handwriting.” God’s handwriting has never looked more beautiful.

Copyright 2009 by Harriet Hodgson

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