housands of people choose laser eye surgery to correct vision problems and eliminate their need for glasses or contact lenses. Like any other medical procedure, laser surgery has both benefits and risks.
Laser eye surgery is the most common procedure used to correct visual impairments caused by refractive errors, such as myopia (difficulty seeing far away), hyperopia (difficulty seeing up close), and astigmatism (distorted vision of objects at a distance).
More recently, laser surgery has also been used for presbyopia (difficulty focusing on nearby objects), which is part of the natural aging process and can also be corrected with reading glasses.
All of these conditions are caused by improper focusing of images on the retina, the light-sensitive membrane located at the back of the eye. The eye’s ability to focus depends largely on the shape of the cornea, the transparent front surface of the eye.
Laser surgery permanently reshapes the cornea using a laser device.