About 2.6 billion people worldwide are affected by myopia or nearsightedness. Myopia is the most common refractive error among children and adults. People around the world suffer from unhealthy vision because of refractive errors. Eye strain, headaches, hazy & blurred vision, and difficulty reading are some of the expected effects of refractive errors.
SMILE (Small Incision Lenticule Extraction) is the latest innovative method of improving your vision by reshaping your cornea. It is a surgical procedure to treat people with nearsighted vision. It can be said to be an inventive keyhole laser surgery.
What is SMILE Eye Surgery?
Small Incision Lenticule Extraction is the firsthand alternative to Laser assisted in situ keratomileuses (LASIK) procedure that involves the use of a laser to reshape your cornea to treat nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism.
Also known as Refractive Lenticule Extraction or RELIX, SMILE treats people with myopia and mild astigmatism up to 5 diopters. This bladeless and painless procedure changes the cornea’s curvature, restoring the refractions to normal. This surgery enables one to have sharp vision and to see clearly without using glasses or lenses.
How Does the procedure of SMILE surgery work?
This procedure is completely painless and takes less than 15 minutes to treat both eyes. This procedure works by removing the lenticular from the central corneal layer and doing four small incisions on the cornea to remove the lenticule. Before any surgery, your doctor performs a slight examination to ensure you do not have any problems, which in turn affects or worsens your surgery. Similarly, before the SMILE surgery, your eye doctor or ophthalmologist performs a slight complete eye examination to check your vision to see if it has increased or decreased over the past times. Read further to know in detail how this surgery works.
The procedure of SMILE:
- This surgery process starts with your ophthalmologist checking your cornea thickness and noting the information in a computer that then guides your surgery.
- After carrying out the measurement, you are given anesthesia drops to make your eyes numb. This ensures that the treatment is performed painlessly.
- The next step involves the Carl Zeiss VisuMax laser to position pulses on the central corneal layer attentively.
- The pulses inserted from the Laser tend to create tiny bubbles. These bubbles help in creating the outline for the tissue or lenticule that needs to be extracted.
- The femtosecond laser is being used to remove a lens-shaped disc from the cornea. A small incision extracts the disc from the cornea.
- This Laser forms a linking channel that enables the tissue to be removed precisely by the ophthalmologist.
- This whole process changes the shape of one’s cornea, thereby making the vision sharper and more transparent than before.
SMILE surgery uses the Laser for a notably concise amount of time. Both eyes are treated in 15 minutes, and you get your vision back clearer. People experiencing SMILE surgery, though, take several days to recover. The procedure is worthwhile and fruitful.
Benefits of SMILE eye surgery.
Being a relatively new method, this surgery offers several benefits. This method is considered a significant advancement in treating refractive surgical errors. The prime benefits of SMILE are:
- No flap surgery.
SMILE is known as no flap surgery. One of the primary benefits of this surgery is that it is less invasive compared with LASIK. The tiny incision made with a femtosecond laser in the cornea is less invasive than creating a corneal flap to access the inner layer to reshape the cornea.
- Safer and reliable.
This procedure is a computer-guided laser eye surgery. The advancement of computers ensures the safety and attentiveness of the doctor. The corneal measurements inserted in the computer guide the whole procedure.
- No pain surgery.
Before the procedure, an individual is given anesthesia drops to numb the eyes. This ensures that you do not experience any discomfort or pain during the surgery. Most of the patients who experienced SMILE Zeiss surgery report no pain or discomfort in the process. Anesthesia and medications are provided to calm and comfort one throughout the process.
- Quick treatment and procedure.
One of the best benefits of this surgery is that it does not take any longer to complete the process. This is a quick process than your actual appointment procedure. The treatment of both eyes is completed in less than 15 minutes (30 seconds approx. for an eye). Even the use of Laser is done for a small proportion of the time.
- Fewer complications.
This is another best benefit of SMILE Zeiss surgery. People do not experience any kind of significant side effects after the surgery. Dry eyes are the most common side effect of eye surgeries. This newly advanced surgical procedure involves low risk of complication than any other eye correction surgery method. The main reason for this is the tiny invasion made in your cornea.
Final thoughts
The SMILE Zeiss method is suitable for many people who are not eligible for LASIK surgery. This procedure shows fast results. Typically, the vision of an individual is increased by almost 80% after SMILE Zeiss surgery. The maximum result is shown within a few weeks of surgery. SMILE eye surgery is an excellent alternative to LASIK or LASEK surgery. If you have experience discomfort with wearing lenses, then this is the perfect option for you to get your vision clearer without any kind of significant complications and procedures. One thing to keep in mind is that it is possible that after surgery, you may experience blurry vision for a few hours, but it will be improved. If in case that happens, you do not need to worry. Blurred vision after an operation is considered normal according to trials. Expectantly, now you have got a better and sounding understanding of SMILE Carl Zeiss VisuMax laser surgery.