By Bruce D Hunter
The one thing that people who have sight never really consider is how precious that sight is to them. It's just one of those things that we take for granted, simply because we don't have to think to see, we just see. It's like breathing, or your heartbeat. It just happens.
It doesn't take much though to make you aware of such things. Perhaps with your heart it's a minor little palpitation or flutter that you feel. Very quickly you realize just how important your vital organs are, and that you're lucky to have them.
One of the scariest tragedies to most humans (besides speaking in public) is to lose their eyesight. I've heard many people say that they could handle anything but that. It is a scary thought indeed. One thing's for sure though, even the smallest of change in your eyesight can lead to not only fear, but also become a very uncomfortable and annoying aspect of your life.
Your eyes are your windows to the world, and every now and then, people's eyes tend to get a little fogged up. This has to do with such things as nearsightedness a.k.a. myopia, where you actually can't see objects far away. The other common problem that people have is farsightedness, and you can probably guess then that with this condition, actually called hyperopia, that you can't see objects that are close to you. And the other most common condition that happens with people's eyes is called astigmatism. Astigmatism is where sight becomes a bit blurred and not as detailed. This has to do with the way the light enters the eyes.
The usual remedy for these conditions has been for century's eye glasses. We often see pictures of the great genius Benjamin Franklin wearing glasses, and there's a very good reason for that.
He actually invented them. Back then they were called bifocals and for people with farsightedness or nearsightedness they were a great help. Well, at least to those who could afford them!
Thankfully we live in a technologically advanced time, where technology has come very far, and we can now help people with these aforementioned conditions gain their site back, and without having to even wear glasses or the later invented contact lens.
The procedure is called lasik surgery which was invented in about 1991 by a Greek gentleman by the name of Ioannis Pallikaris (say that five times fast). Since then the procedure has been much more perfected and has grown hugely in popularity. In the United States alone, millions of patients receive the treatment each year. Not to mention that the surgery has been performed in over 87 different countries thus far. That's a lot of fixed eyeballs.
The greatest part about this awesome new technology however is that the surgery is pretty non-invasive, is actually performed quite quickly, and gives the patient a rapid recovery. The patient stays awake for the surgery as well, and it's a same day in-and-out procedure.
Before the surgery, an eye drop of local anesthesia is placed into the eye in order to numb the area in which the surgeon will be working.
During the surgery the surgeon will actually be performing a two step procedure which involves first peeling back a portion of the cornea - basically as a flap in the patients eye - and then goes to work with the laser inside to reshape or manipulate certain parts of the cornea (or another fibrous section called the stroma) and this changes the way that light is reflected in the eye. The flap is then refolded down and the eye is left to heal.
Healing time is relatively fast, and a patient can expect to feel a little bit of soreness as well as scratchiness in the eye, but for the most part that's about all. All in all, the surgery takes about 15 minutes per eye. Although lasik eye surgery is a fairly quick procedure, it's certainly a rather complicated, and non simplistic one, and not to be taken too lightheartedly. Especially if you consider the fact of how many lives this surgery has changed for the better.
Bruce Hunter is the CEO of CORE Magazine in Denver Colorado. Visit our cosmetic surgery clinic section now to get free access to information on lasik doctors.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bruce_D_Hunter
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