What does it mean when your doctor tells you that your LASIK scans are irregular scans?
The scan that we are speaking of are called a corneal topography. A corneal topography is a noninvasive imaging technique for mapping the surface curvature of the cornea. The cornea is responsible for over 70% of the eye’s refractive power, its topology is significant in determining the quality of vision. The three-dimensional map created from this procedure is incredibly valuable during this preoperative phase of your refractive surgery consultation. This mapping can shed light into a number of issues that are beneficial during the planning process for refractive surgery.
If you have an eye rubbing habit we want to help you to break it. It is our job as eye care providers to educate our patients properly about the concerns of perpetual eye rubbing. It weakens the cornea.
Often eye rubbing is highly associated with Keratoconus. Keratoconus is a pathological condition where the cornea is unusually very steep. This condition shows very clearly on a cornea topography.
Our goal is to get rid of the more aggressive eye rubbing all together both pre operatively and post operatively. Sometimes corneal scans are irregular because the patient has worn RGP or TORIC contact lenses for years. If this is the case we will have the patient stay out of their lenses for an extended amount of time until the corneal topography scans become normal. Sometimes, scans are just irregular due to the patient’s corneal pathology. If this is the case usually a patient is deemed a non-candidate for LASIK and PRK.
We stress to our patients that we will not clear you as a good candidate unless your corneal scans are stable and normal. This means that if you do have an abnormal scan we will bring you in a number of times for repeat scans and put you on a pre-op regimen of artificial tears, discontinue your contact lens wear in order for your corneas to return to their natural state. We want you to be 20/HAPPY. You do not want us to continue to change your vision based on inaccurate scans. Corneal rehabilitation can be a tedious process but it is a necessary one to ensure that you get the best corrected vision possible.
