What is an excimer laser,
and how does it correct my prescription?

Laser Eye Surgery with the Excimer Laser
Initially developed south of the Canadian border by IBM laboratories to print tiny computer micro-circuits, the excimer eye surgery laser releases a very small and precisely focused beam of light which can make the tiniest of etchings on a surface.

In the case of corrective laser eye surgery, the surface involved is your cornea, which is the transparent window of the eye through which our eyes see. Its curvature is a major determinant of the eye's vision prescription (e.g. myopia). In order to permanently correct an eye prescription, the excimer laser is used to alter the shape of the cornea. With the advanced Montreal eye surgery equipment, each laser pulse removes less than one hundred-thousandth of an inch to make the change you require. The results are the primary proof: in the vast majority of people, the need for distance glasses is eliminated following surgery. Even patients with very high degrees of refractive error (strong prescriptions) find their dependence on glasses significantly reduced.

It should be stressed that, just as not all automobiles are created equal, there are many grades of excimer laser on the world market, ranging from start-up companies with little or no technical service support, to serious qualified manufacturers. Laservue Montreal has 4 excimer lasers. In the German made Zeiss Mel-80 and Bausch & Lomb-Technolas Keracor 217z, we feel that we are offering the "Mercedes" of excimer lasers to our Montreal, Canada, and US eye surgery patients in our clinic.

The excimer laser should not be confused with Radial Keratotomy (RK), also called the "Russian Technique", which relies on the manual dexterity of the surgeon to perform very deep cuts into your cornea. RK is only rarely performed where excimer laser technology has become established, and only for cases of very low myopia.

The excimer laser procedure is quite simple. For each patient, a computer calculates in advance the amount of energy required to achieve the desired amount of correction, and controls the delivery of this energy during the treatment. The surgeon, with an automated tracking device, aims the excimer laser through an operating microscope. The procedure is painless and usually lasts no more than 1 minute.

Many patients express concern regarding long-term safety. In fact, all of the laser energy is reflected at the surface of the eye. Since the first excimer laser treatment performed in 1986, no study has confirmed any effect on the inside of the eye, even on the inner surface of the cornea only one half of a millimeter away.