Refractive Surgery Alliance Society 2018-2019 Overview

VISION FOR A LIFETIME

The RSA firmly believes in a collaboration with patients, their families and their friends to provide innovative vision corrections solutions at every stage of life ~ Vision for a Lifetime. There are four stages of vision development throughout a person lifetime and vision correction surgery offers several options for vision corrections at every stage. The stages are: GROWTH PHASE: Childhood through adolescence. Generally glasses and/or contact lenses are prescribed in the growth phase. While these appliances do not correct the underlying problem, they do allow the child to see, until ocular maturity is reached and a vision correction procedure can be performed to correct the vision. OCULAR MATURITY: Reached in early adulthood, about age 18. Vision correction surgery such as LASIK, PRK, SMILE, or Implantable Contact Lenses (ICL’s) is performed to permanently correct myopia, hyperopia and astigmatism. Glasses and contact lenses are prescribed when patients chooses not to correct their vision, but just want to see or when certain eye diseases such as keratoconus are detected. PRESBYOPIA: Most commonly associated with the sudden need for reading glasses between age 40 and 50 and near vision loss is due hardening of the internal lens of the eye. Today, several excellent surgical procedures are available to permanently treat presbyopia and restore both reading vison and distance vision, ranging from LASIK, to Inlays, to Refractive Lens Exchange procedures. CATARACTS: “Cloudy Hardened Lens”. Most common at age 60 and older, where the internal natural lens is replaced with a high-technology implantable lens that correct vision at all distances, or across a range of distances alleviating, inmost cases, the need for glasses and/or contact lenses.