Taking your vision to new heights

There are various surgical procedures for correcting or adjusting your eye's focusing ability by reshaping the cornea — the clear, round dome at the front of your eye. If you have a refractive error, such as nearsightedness (myopia), farsightedness (hyperopia), astigmatism, or presbyopia, refractive surgery is a method for correcting or improving your vision.

At Focus Eye Centre we offer Intralase SBK and PRK procedures. Both procedures are extremely safe, often providing patients with their excellent natural vision.

When you think about surgery, you might expect at least an hour-long procedure. However, laser surgery is quite different and very straightforward. Generally, the surgery procedure itself will take only about ten to fifteen minutes to complete.

Laser eye surgery should be performed after your eyes are fully developed. Your vision may change during your lifetime (which is why prescriptions are often changed and updated). This is due to your eye muscles and how they change, affecting one's ability to focus. It is not a structural change to your eyes. Usually, a person's eyes are fully developed by age 18.

Candidacy for LVC at Focus is determined during a thorough (no-charge, no-obligation) Consultation process. Some general parameters for candidacy include:

• You should be 18 years or older.
• Your eye prescription should not have changed much in the last year.
• Your refractive error must be one that can be treated with LVC.
• Your corneas need to be thick enough and healthy, and your overall eye health must be generally good.
• You need to have realistic expectations about what LVC can and cannot do for you.

At Focus, the Consultation is the first step in what can be a life-changing procedure.

Laser eye surgery is extremely safe and is designed to be a long-term, vision correction solution. When one's eyes go through a significant change, including the normal aging process or the onset of a cataract formation, it can impact vision.

At Focus, we help stay on top of any changes and ensure that our patients are well informed about eye health and the best available treatment options.

Your eye works a lot like a camera. Light rays focus through your lens onto the retina, a layer of light-sensitive cells at the back of the eye. Similar to photographic film, the retina allows the image to be "seen" by the brain.

Over time, the lens of our eye can become cloudy, preventing light rays from passing clearly through the lens. The loss of transparency may be so mild that vision is barely affected, or it can be so severe that no shapes or movements are seen — only light and dark. When the lens becomes cloudy enough to obstruct vision to any significant degree, it is called a cataract.

Eyeglasses or contact lenses can usually correct slight refractive errors caused by early cataracts, but they cannot sharpen your vision if a severe cataract is present. The most common cause of cataract is aging. Other causes include trauma, medications such as steroids, systemic diseases such as diabetes, and prolonged exposure to ultraviolet light. People who smoke seem to get cataracts earlier than non-smokers.

A cloudy lens interferes with light passing through to the retina, the light-sensing layer of cells at the back of the eye. Having a cataract can be compared to looking at the world through a foggy window.

Phacoemulsification is a surgical method used to remove the clouding of the eye's naturally clear lens known as a cataract.

As the providers of your cataract surgery, the main goal at Focus Eye is to provide you with the best visual outcome possible. To help achieve this goal, some pre-surgery testing options that are not covered by your OHIP plan are available for you to consider. One option is special testing with the IOLMaster, and the second is Wavefront testing to facilitate selecting the ideal intraocular lens for you.

Focus Eye also uses the highly-advanced AnalyzOR and ORA systems for up-to-the-moment lens selection before and during the surgical process.

Your vision will probably be blurred for a short period, but then it should clear in an hour or two. You will not need to wear an eye patch and you may resume normal activities immediately. You can anticipate some "floaters" following this procedure, however, these will likely resolve within a few weeks time. Your Ophthalmologist will want to check your eyes later to make sure the eye pressure is normal.

Cataract surgery is a very successful operation. One and a half million people have this procedure every year in North America, and 95% have a successful result. As with any surgical procedure, complications can occur during or after surgery, and some are severe enough to limit vision. In the vast majority of cases, vision and quality of life are improved.