LASIK Monovision surgery can restore failing vision, but may not be for everyone

Approximately 62 million people in the United States are myopic, or nearsighted, and require eyeglasses or contact lenses for vision correction. More than 12 million of these people have undergone LASIK procedures to fix their vision.

One of the pioneers of LASIK Surgery is Illinois’s own Colman R. Kraff, MD a top rated ophthalmologist in Chicago, who as part of the Kraff Eye Institute, has been a top rated LASIK Surgeon in the field.  Dr. Kraff has performed more than 35,000 LASIK surgeries since the procedure was approved by the FDA.

LASIK is particularly helpful for presbyopic patients, who require reading glasses.

“When people enter their mid- to late-40s, what is going on in their eyes is they are losing the ability to accommodate the natural crystalline lens inside the eye,” Dr. Kraff said. “As a result, they need some sort of magnification in order to see up close, like reading glasses or over-the-counter magnifiers.”

As people reach their 40s, presbyopia occurs as the protein composition of the crystalline lens changes, making it harder and less flexible. When the crystalline lens loses its ability to flex, it is no longer able to change its shape and effectively bend light rays as sharply and the ability to focus on close objects is diminished.

To correct their vision, Dr. Kraff recommends monovision treatment, which uses LASIK Surgery to set the dominant eye for distance and the non-dominant eye for reading.  Although this may seem an awkward way to see, nearly 30 percent of all patients will tolerate this method and have very good functional vision, Dr. Kraff said.

For anyone considering monovision, Dr. Kraff recommends that they achieve the effect with contact lenses prior to surgery to determine if monovision is suitable for their individual needs and ability to adapt.

“The nice thing when we are doing LASIK surgery for people who are nearsighted is that we will show them what monovision is like and assimilate the vision with the contact lenses,”  Dr. Kraff said. “The biggest challenge is seeing if the patient can tolerate it, and that’s why we spend a fair amount of time showing them what it’s like living in the monovision world. I encourage them to drive, exercise, use their computer and make sure it feels very natural.”

The procedure involves the custom correction of low to moderate myopia in the dominant eye and the partial correction of nearsightedness in the non-dominant eye. The approved range of correction is myopia to -6 D and up to 3 D of astigmatism for patients 40 years of age and older.

In performing the procedure, surgeons first use iris registration to properly align the corneas. They then perform a standard custom correction on the dominant eye while adjusting the custom correction to preserve a small amount of myopia in the non-dominant eye. Surgeons say they perform an undercorrection of 1.25 D to 2.00 D in the non-dominant eye.

“There are some patients who, when they see it in the office, aren’t sure, but they adapt to it after a few weeks,” Dr. Kraff said. “Some patients can’t adapt at all and we need to know this ahead of time so we don’t do a permanent procedure on the eye that they aren’t going to like.”

Dr. Colman R. Kraff was selected by TopTierMD as a Chicago Top Doctor and is considered best in Ophthamology in Chicago.  He specializes in Refractive Surgery, Cataract Surgery and the Implantation of Collamer Lenses.