EW FEATURE
56
Refractive surgery in military personnel and first responders • July 2016
use of the femtosecond laser for
creating the flap," he said. "Both
PRK and LASIK have been extensive-
ly studied in the military, particu-
larly their effect on the quality of
vision and task performance, and in
special environments, such as high
altitudes. There will likely be an
increase in the percentage of LASIK
as all refractive centers now have
femtosecond lasers to create the flap.
The military will continue to study
the latest techniques and technology
to provide the very best procedures
for its personnel." EW
Editors' note: Dr. Schallhorn has
financial interests with Abbott Medi-
cal Optics (Abbott Park, Illinois), Carl
Zeiss Meditec (Jena, Germany), and
AcuFocus (Irvine, California).
Contact information
Schallhorn: scschallhorn@yahoo.com
ablation (PRK or LASEK). The aver-
age was 24%. Eighteen percent of
respondents said that 41% or more
of their laser vision correction proce-
dures involve surface ablation.
Surgeons were asked: What
category of ablations is the majority
of your corneal refractive procedures
now, and what will it be in the next
2 to 3 years? Currently, 52% of U.S.
respondents are performing wave-
front-guided and 29% wavefront-op-
timized; a similar percentage said
this would be their ablation profile
in 2 to 3 years. Outside the U.S.,
responses were evenly split among
wavefront-guided (26%), optimized
(27%), and standard ablations
(27%). Non-U.S. surgeons said their
use of topography-customized
ablations will increase from 11%
currently to 18%, and femtosecond
intrastromal lenticule extraction
ablations will increase from 5% cur-
rently to 16%.
According to Dr. Schallhorn,
wavefront-guided and optimized
are the 2 dominant ablation profiles
used in the military.
"The first refractive procedure
used in the military was PRK, before
the advent of LASIK. LASIK has
gained greater acceptance with the
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Refractive continued from page 54
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