All kinds of laser refractive surgery, whether surface ablation (PRK/TransPRK/epiLASIK/LASEK-they are all the same), LASIK or ReLEx SMILE will induce some amount of post-operative dry eyes. However, if you look purely at the disturbance to the corneal nerve endings and how long they may take to regenerate, it is likely that the problem is least with surface ablation, then SMILE, and then LASIK. There are also some studies which show that the degree of post-operative dryness is less with SMILE compared with LASIK.
However, consider this:
Dry eyes span a spectrum from mild-moderate-severe. Generally, mild to moderate cases do well with any of the above techniques (with appropriate pre and post-operative treatments), or in other words the difference between them is usually not so great as to make a big difference in the time to recovery for these patients. On the other hand, if I had a patient whose eyes were so dry that I thought they were unsuitable for LASIK, I would probably not recommend that they have any of the other techniques of refractive surgery as well.
In considering the choice of laser technique, I feel it is more important to consider their other pros and cons. For example, with surface ablation there is no post-operative flap and the cornea is theoretically weakened the least. On the other hand, recovery from both discomfort and blur is slowest of all. With SMILE, there is no post-operative flap but recovery of vision is still often delayed, there is only manual compensation for eye rotation in the case of astigmatic corrections, and there is no wavefront guided treatment. With LASIK, you get the fastest recovery of vision and comfort, with automatic rotation compensation and wavefront guided treatments. And while there is a flap, this flap itself makes any future enhancement procedure very simple and also recover just as fast as in the original surgery.
The above are just a few of the pros and cons of the common laser procedures. Have a think about the properties of each of them and your priorities eg do you worry about having a flap that might get poked because you play very rough contact sports? Or would you like to have a procedure that gives you the clearest possible vision in the fastest possible time? In my opinion, these are usually more important factors to consider, rather than the state of dryness of the eye, when trying to choose the type of laser surgery to go for.
