Laser-Assisted Subepithelial Keratectomy Enhancement After Small-Incision Lenticule Extraction Surgery
Narrative Responses:
Purpose
SMILE is a flapless, small incision corneal refractive surgery. As such, enhancement procedures after SMILE is challenging. This paper will report on the procedure, the results of LASEK as a means of enhancement surgery after SMILE surgery and show how the procedure is performed.
Methods
A case report. A 60 year old Caucasian gentleman with a pre-operative refraction of -5.00/-0.75 x 60 in the right eye and -4.00/-1.00 x 90 in his left eye underwent SMILE surgery in both eyes. One month post-SMILE surgery, patient was noted to have an under correction in his dominant right eye. His best corrected vision was 20/40 and his refraction was -0.50/-0.75 x 70 in the right eye. There was no improvement 4 months after surgery and patient underwent LASEK surgery in his right eye as a form of enhancement surgery.
Results
Six months after LASEK enhancement surgery, the patient’s right unaided visual acuity was 20/25 and the refraction was close to emmetropia. The patient was highly satisfied with the overall overcome of the surgery. The one year post-operative outcomes will be available by the time of the conference.
Conclusion
As there is no corneal flap after SMILE surgery, surface ablation techniques will be required for enhancement procedures. This paper shows that LASEK can be a suitable means of enhancement surgery after SMILE.