PRK has a slightly longer recovery time compared to LASIK. On average, this recover period is somewhere between 3 and 5 days. During this time, patients may experience blurriness and fluctuations in their vision during the initial days of healing, and may experience brief periods of discomfort or irritation as the epithelial cells regrow. Prescribed anti-inflammatory and lubricating drops will minimize post-procedural discomfort and speed-up the healing process. As with LASIK eye surgery, the end results are improved vision.

As with LASIK, anesthetic numbing drops are placed on the eye, so you won’t feel anything from the laser treatment. You may feel some light pressure during the procedure. Patients report feeling some mild discomfort and irritation following their PRK procedure, but state it is tolerable. This irritation can be alleviated by the use of lubricating drops and over-the-counter pain relievers are prescribed by your surgeon. The discomfort is most noticeable in the few days immediately following the procedure and abate over time.

We understand that the concept of having someone do something to your eyes can be unsettling, but rest assured, you don’t experience pain. Since the eyes are easily numbed with anaesthetic numbing drops, you won’t feel pain. Being asleep during LASIK or PRK eye surgery would actually be detrimental; for the cool-pulses of laser light to reshape the cornea in the right places of your eye, you will be asked to focus on a blinking light during the very short procedure (less than a 60 seconds per eye).

In most cases, the results provided by PRK eye surgery are permanent. However, there are rare instances where some regression of the improved vision presents the need for an enhancement laser vision correction procedure. Dr. Jimmy Hu offers peace of mind, as any medically-appropriate laser vision enhancements or re-treatments, are provided free of charge, to help you maintain your best-achieved vision results for the rest of your life.

Custom PRK refers to the computational algorithms used in measuring the eye from front to back, creating a three-dimensional (3-D) image of the cornea. This corneal mapping, which is like the fingerprint of each patient’s eye, allows Dr. Jimmy Hu to treat refractive errors AND higher-order aberrations – irregularities on the cornea that act as lumps and bumps on a surface that ideally, would be smooth. These aberrations may lead to poor night vision, glares and haloes, starbursts, and low-contrast vision problems. Custom PRK offers a quality of vision that surpasses the results of standard, or conventional PRK, which uses a patient’s prescription alone as the guide in programming the laser. Patients after custom laser treatment have fewer issues with glare/haloes, if any.

Yes! Both Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) and Health Spending Accounts (HSA) are approved for PRK, as PRK is considered a qualified medical procedure.