how did we figure out laser surgery to correct various eye-related problems and how does it work?
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Someone wanted to determine what lasers could do in eye surgery. The possible advantages of using a laser rather than a scalpel seemed significant, so they decided to try it.
First, you get a laser and some eyes from a farm animal. You try things out. What happens if you aim the laser at cataracts? What if you try to “weld” the retina into place when it is detached? What happens to the shape of the cornea if you heat tiny spots with a laser?
Once you have a good idea of what the laser does and does not do, you try it on the eyes of humans who left their bodies for science.
Then, you try it on living animals. In some cases such as serious vision impairment due to cataracts it is possible to tell that vision is improved even though the patient cannot talk. In other cases you just learn whether you get the same results on living eyeballs as you did on dead ones.
Finally, once you are ready you put out ads saying, “Do you have cataracts? Earn up to $5000 if you qualify for our scientific research!” Then you try it on people.
Lasers can be used for a number of things:
1. Blood vessels that are causing problems or are close to bursting can be cauterized by focusing a laser on them through the lens of the eye, avoiding cutting the eye while it corrects the issue.
2. Lasers can shine through the lens and destroy cataracts, allowing a person with cataracts to see again.
3. Lasers can be used to reattach corneas via a process known as “corneal welding”. This is also used to help secure artificial corneas.
4. Lasers are used in a surgical procedure called laser retinopexy to “weld” detached retinas and close tears in the retina.
5. Lasers can be used, often along with scalpels, to reshape the cornea to correct for nearsightedness, farsightedness, or astigmatism. In the best-known technique, LASIK, a scalpel creates an incision that creates a flap of cornea which is lifted out of the way. This preserves the surface. The laser is then used to ablate (destroy the surface of) the tissue inside the incision. The incision is closed and allowed to heal. This changes the shape of the cornea so that it focuses better.
If you reshape the eye’s lens you can refocus the light properly onto the retina. So it’s like grinding a glass lens.
Hockey player got hit in the eye with a puck, split his cornea, after it healed he had better sight in that eye
I don’t know if this is true, but I read that the first surgery to correct nearsightedness was invented when a man wearing glasses was punched in the face during a fight.
The shards from his glass lens bruised his eye, slightly deforming his eye lens and his vision improved as a consequence. The doctor who treated him got the idea to do slight cuts on the surface of the eye using a diamond scalpel, changing the shape of the eye lens enough to fix the imperfection that caused the nearsightedness.
The laser surgery was an improvement on the process, using a laser instead of the diamond scalpel.
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