Planned vs achieved stromal thickness reduction in femtosecond laser-assisted Myopic LASIK: an objective evaluation

Session Details

Session Title: Refractive
Session Date/Time: Sunday 28/02/2016 | 08:30-11:00
Paper Time: 08:42
Venue: Skalkotas
First Author: : S.Georgiadou GREECE
Co Author(s): :    G. Asimellis   A. Kanellopoulos           

Abstract Details

Purpose:

To objectively evaluate corneal stromal thickness reduction in myopic LASIK and compare attempted to achieved ablation depth in a consecutive retrospective study.

Setting:

LaserVision.gr Clinical and Research Eye Institute, Athens, Greece

Methods:

Stromal thickness reduction was retrospectively investigated in 205 consecutive myopic and myopic astigmatic LASIK eyes. Anterior-segment optical coherence tomography (AS-OCT, Rt-Vue-100, Optovue, Fremont, CA) was employed to provide pre-operative and three-month postoperative pachymetry maps. Stromal thickness change was evaluated as the difference between minimum thickness in pre- to post- pachymetry. The difference in epithelial thickness was also considered. The derived maximum stromal thickness reduction was then compared to the programmed (planned) maximum ablation depth. Deviations of planned vs. achieved maximum stromal thickness changes were correlated with residual refractive error.

Results:

The three-month stromal reduction was 86.01±28.28 μm, compared to the average programmed maximum ablation depth of 88.48±26.05 μm. The attempted vs. achieved thickness outliers correlated with deviations in achieved refractive correction.

Conclusions:

We introduce an objective technique for evaluation of actual stromal thickness reduction in myopic LASIK. Actual objective stromal thickness reduction following myopic LASIK correlates well with the attempted versus achieved refractive change.

Financial Disclosure:

One or more of the authors travel has been funded, fully or partially, by a company producing, developing or supplying the product or procedure presented