No Touch Laser Eye Surgery: A Guide to No Touch & Bladeless Eye Surgeries
No touch laser eye surgery is the group name for the latest wave of corrective eye surgeries. The main feature is they don’t use any mechanical instruments to cut open the corneal flap, which is what happens in traditional eye surgery.
However, no touch eye surgery is still an invasive procedure and uses a laser to vaporize your cornea. So before getting any kind of laser eye procedure, take the time to fully research the procedure, after care routine, common side effects and risks. Because once you have laser eye surgery, there’s no “undoing” it…
Types of No Touch Laser Eye Surgery
There are various “no touch” techniques coming into use, such as:
- No Touch PRK – Developed by London Eye Centre. It is used to treat any degree of nearsightedness, up to +6 diopters of farsightedness, and some degrees of astigmatism. It cannot cure aging vision. During surgery, the eyelids are held open with a clasp to prevent you from blinking. Numbing drops are used, then a small amount of the cornea is vaporized using the Excimer laser. See a demonstration of this no touch laser eye surgery:
- No Touch All-Laser Epi-LASIK – Also known as Trans-Epithelial Surface Treatment. This technique also uses the Excimer laser to ablate the outer layer of the cornea (epithelium). Round two involves reshaping the cornea to correction vision. Bandage contact lenses are placed over the cornea for a few days afterwards during healing.
- Bladeless LASIK – A femtosecond laser creates the corneal flap instead of an automated mechanical microkeratome blade. Although technically a no touch laser eye surgery, once the flap is opened, this procedure is exactly the same as LASIK. So the pros and cons of bladeless LASIK are largely the same as traditional LASIK.
Who is No Touch Laser Eye Surgery For?
This kind of surgery is not recommended for everyone. It will largely be up to your eye doctor to decide, based on your specific circumstances. Generally, “no touch” eye surgery is suitable for:
- Patients who play contact sports (rugby, martial arts) or have careers that pose a greater risk of injury (police, armed forces).
- Patients who are highly anxious or worried about LASIK flap creation (but who also accept the new risks posed by no touch laser eye surgery).
- Patients with compromised corneal bio-mechanics (dependent on the shape and thickness of your cornea and your current prescription).
- Patients who are likely to suffer flap-related complications with LASIK (such as having small, deep set eyes).
- Patients undergoing follow-up eye surgery to correct previous imperfect LASIK or Epi-LASIK procedures.
It is essential that you have an in-depth consultation with a professional before deciding whether no touch laser eye surgery is right for you. Find your local laser eye clinic online and ask whether they offer “no touch” surgery yet.
Natural Vision Correction
If the pain and risks of no touch laser eye surgery seem too great, know that there are natural vision improvement options available to you.
Eye exercises can be used to treat mild-to-severe degrees of common refractive errors (nearsightedness, farsightedness, aging vision and astigmatism).
What’s more, you may start to see the difference in a few days and experience dramatic vision improvement in the same time it takes to recover from eye surgery.
I highly recommend this as an non-invasive alternative to any no touch laser eye surgery. Learn more in my full review.
