Alternatives & New Options

LASIK is an elective surgery. It is not medically necessary. Many patients feel very comfortable wearing glasses or contact lenses. If you are one of those patients, you do not have to have surgery.

RK and PRK are good procedures for certain patients. Please review them under the About LASIK tab.

ICL (intracameral intraocular lenses). ICL’s are not yet approved by the FDA, but do provide a good option for patients who are just too nearsighted or farsighted to have LASIK. In this procedure, which Dr. Thorne has done and is certified to perform, a small lens is implanted into the eye behind the pupil just in front of the natural lens of the eye. It, by adding another focusing lens, changes the focal point of the eye. This procedure will probably become popular, but will probably not replace LASIK, and it is a little more risky.

Verisyse Lens

The Verisyse™ phakic intraocular lens (IOL) can be implanted temporarily or permanently in the eye to improve vision in patients with moderate to severe nearsightedness. Many of these patients are not candidates for other corrective treatments such as LASIK, and are resigned to wearing thick glasses or contact lenses. 

The cornea acts a lens in the front of the eye, bending light rays so that they focus on the retina. In nearsighted patients the cornea is elongated or steepened, so light rays focus in front of the retina and patients suffer from blurry vision. The Verisyse™ IOL is implanted on the iris behind the cornea to correct the way light is focused and to improve vision. The cornea is left in place to retain the ability to focus between near and distant objects. The procedure is outpatient and takes 15-30 minutes under local anesthesia. 

The Verisyse™ IOL has been used in over 150,000 procedures worldwide with precise and predictable results. The lenses are made with PMMA, the material used in cataract surgery for the last 50 years. Please schedule an appointment or consultation to find out if the Verisyse™ lens is right for you. Candidates should be over 21, have good eye health and stable vision, and should not be pregnant or nursing.

IntraLase®

The IntraLase® FS laser is a highly precise tool aiding in corneal flap creation, the first step in laser vision correction surgery.  During the procedure, the IntraLase laser fires 15,000 pulses per second into the cornea, where the flap can be created at a depth and diameter determined by the surgeon as appropriate for each individual patient.  In addition to benefiting from this pinpoint (2-3 micron) accuracy, patients who undergo surgery conducted with the IntraLase laser are less likely to need an enhancement (follow-up) procedure than with other technologies.