We have many OTHER options of refractive surgery that do not involve a laser re-shaping your cornea.
These typically do not have the same side-effect profile of causing dry eyes, significant glares / haloes, loss of contrast sensitivity and period of visual recovery that post-LASIK patients typically report.
The first option here is that of Photorefractive Intrastromal Cross-Linking (PiXL). This is a non-surgical method of correction of minor degrees of myopia by riboflavin saturation and ultra-violet-A (UVA) accelerated cross-linking of the cornea. This non-surgical procedure corrects minor degrees of myopia, but does not correct astigmatism unfortunately.
The second option is that of an Implantable Collamer Contact Lens (ICL). This is a surgical procedure to implant a specifically tailor-manufactured lens that is placed in the posterior chamber (behind the iris, and in front of the normal crystalline lens). This is a completely reversible procedure (unlike LASIK) and offers excellent vision with minimal recovery time, and minimal / no dry eye complications. The most important benefit is that it may treat a wide-spectrum of hyperopia, myopia (in the thousands of degrees even!) as well as astigmatism, with excellent retention of contrast / color testing and minimal side-effects like glares / haloes.
