Laser Eye Surgery Consultation in Fort Smith

LASIK vision correction is a quick procedure that can usually be completed in 30 minutes or less. Your surgeon may use numbing drops in your eyes before the procedure begins.

Your surgeon will use a precision instrument to create a small flap to access the part of the cornea that requires reshaping. Using the precision instrument, your surgeon will remove tiny amounts of corneal tissue. Once the reshaping process has been completed, your surgeon will carefully place the flap back into place.

Following your surgery, your eyes may feel itchy and watery, or you may feel a burning sensation. LASIK eye surgery usually heals without needing stitches, and pain following surgery is rare.

PRK surgery is another form of laser vision correction where the eye surgeon removes the cornea’s surface layer and reshapes the corneal bed with the laser, similar to LASIK. PRK can be ideal for patients whose cornea may be too thin to allow for LASIK safely.

A big difference is the recovery process between the 2 procedures—PRK recovery can take longer. Healing and visual recovery can take longer with PRK surgery because the outer layer of the cornea has to fully regenerate itself.

LASEK eye surgery is a vision correction procedure similar to LASIK. LASEK cuts only as deep as the outer layer of the cornea, and some patients have experienced a faster recovery time from LASEK eye surgery.

LASEK is used to correct refractive errors such as myopia, hyperopia, astigmatism, and presbyopia.

The SMILE procedure involves reshaping the cornea by removing a small lens from the central corneal layer.

This procedure extracts the lenticule through 4 small incisions on the corneal surface, and patients usually heal over a few days. SMILE is a minimally invasive procedure that focuses on correcting simple forms of myopia and astigmatism.

Refractive lens exchange is a procedure that involves using ultrasound to remove the natural lens of the eye and replace it with an intraocular lens (IOL). This procedure can help patients who are nearsighted and farsighted. 

RLE is also used in cataract surgery to remove the cloudy lens and replace it with an artificial lens to restore clear vision. During cataract surgery, the cloudy lens inside your eye is removed and replaced with an artificial intraocular (IOL) lens to restore your clear vision.