Wavefront-Guided Versus Conventional Ablation in Treating Residual Myopia Post LASIK
Narrative Responses:
Purpose
To compare outcomes of residual myopia treatment by conventional vs wavefront-guided ablation.
Methods
A retrospective chart review of patients undergoing LASIK retreatment at the Boston Eye Group from March 2008 to January 2013 was conducted. Only patients with a myopic refraction prior to the primary procedure as well as the retreatment were studied. The patients were divided into two groups according to retreatment ablation technique (conventional vs wavefront-guided). Patients with <6 weeks follow up were excluded from the study. 63 eyes of 59 patients were included. Primary outcomes were visual acuity, final residual refractive error, and ablation depth.
Results
The wavefront-guided and conventional retreatment groups were not significantly different in age (p = 0.28), gender (p = 0.15), primary treatment spherical equivalence (p = 0.39), retreatment spherical equivalence (p= 0.14), or visual acuity preoperatively at retreatment (p = 0.05). There was no statistically significant difference between groups in final visual acuity (p = 0.64) or residual refractive error (p = 0.23). There was a statistically significant difference in ablation depth between the groups (p < 0.01) with the wavefront-guided treatment ablating 45% more than the conventional treatment.
Conclusion
There was no significant advantage to either ablation technique in terms of final visual acuity. However, conventional treatment required significantly less tissue ablation and may prove to be a better alternative in retreatment procedures, particularly when preserving residual corneal stroma is important.