Monday, June 29, 2015

Honesty About LASIK Surgery Important to Charleston Cornea & Refractive Surgery

You may have heard claims from LASIK centers that you can “throw away your eyeglasses” after LASIK or that perhaps going with the lowest cost provider is the best idea and makes no difference on the quality or results.

At Charleston Cornea & Refractive Surgery in Charleston, we believe in complete transparency with our clients.  We want you to be happy and healthy, whether that means you become our patient or not.  The FDA is clamping down on LASIK surgeons who make false or exaggerated claims about LASIK or any type of eye correction surgery.  In a news release last September, the Agency made it clear that anything but total transparency would not be tolerated.

At Charleston Cornea & Refractive Surgery in Charleston, we have always believed in total transparency with our customers.  While most patients breeze through the procedure, LASIK, or other advertised refractive surgery, has risks and potential complications, and they will be discussed during a surgical consultation prior to the procedure.  Also, LASIK does not always mean that you can throw away your glasses.  Older people, people over 40 and other individuals may find that they still need reading glasses or other types of correction even after LASIK.


We are also upfront about costs for the procedures.  We’ve heard horror stories about people looking for low-price deals or coupons, or only paying a few hundred dollars for LASIK, often with bad results.  We price our services fairly and competitively, in order to provide you with the highest quality service and procedures and state-of-the-art equipment.  When it comes to your eyesight, you don’t want to sacrifice.  Your eyes are worth it.

Monday, June 22, 2015

Will Wearing Glasses Make Your Vision Worse?


If you need corrective lenses…but you don’t wear them…what are your reasons?
  1. You hate the way you look in glasses.
  2. You can’t seem to get the hang of wearing contact lenses.
  3.  You simply forget to wear them or misplace/lose them often.
  4.  You think that by wearing glasses your vision will actually become worse.

If you fall into the number 4 category of people, consider this: WebMD has flat-out stated that, “Your eyes will not grow weaker as a result of using corrective lenses. Your prescription may change over time due to aging or the presence of disease, but it is not because of your current prescription.”

People who need reading glasses may be especially prone to thinking that wearing readers will make their vision worse. The fact is that wearing glasses does not weaken your eyesight. Close-up vision deterioration happens to most people over the age of 40. It’s a condition called presbyopia that occurs when the eye lens loses flexibility. You can’t prevent it and you won’t worsen it by wearing readers.

Any type of glasses, whether prescription glasses or readers, are simply an aid to improve vision. If your vision isn’t clear, you owe it to yourself to wear the proper lenses to achieve clear vision.

The alternative is to look into a vision correction procedure, such as Charleston LASIK. Dr. O'Day at Charleston Cornea & Refractive Surgery offers free LASIK Consultations to help people determine their candidacy for this popular procedure. Keep in mind that not all eyes are right for LASIK; having a comprehensive evaluation is the only way to know for sure.


To learn more about Charleston LASIK, contact Charleston Cornea & Refractive Surgery today at 843-856-5275 or http://www.charlestoncornea.com to schedule your free LASIK Consultation. 

Monday, June 15, 2015

Can Contacts Cause Bacteria to Grow in the Eye?

Contacts lenses may cause bacteria to grow in the eye, according to a recent study. The lenses can change the community of bacteria living in your eyes. Results of the study, conducted by NYU Langone, point to contact lenses as causing an increase in bacteria and certain types of infections.

"Our research clearly shows that putting a foreign object, such as a contact lens, on the eye is not a neutral act," says senior study investigator and NYU Langone microbiologist Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello, PhD.

"What we hope our future experiments will show is whether these changes in the eye microbiome of lens wearers are due to fingers touching the eye, or from the lens's direct pressure affecting and altering the immune system in the eye and what bacteria are suppressed or are allowed to thrive," says Dominguez-Bello, an associate professor at NYU Langone.

Study results showed that people who wore contact lenses had triple the proportion of certain bacteria species, on average, compared with the people in the study who did not wear lenses.  Researchers also found differences in the composition of the bacteria appearing on the surface of people’s eyes. 


If you’re concerned about prolonged used of contact lenses and the bacteria they may be causing in your eye, contact  Charleston Cornea & Refractive Surgery in Charleston, South Carolina, to schedule a LASIK consultation to see if you are a candidate to get rid of your lenses for good!   

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Can Fido Get LASIK?

Dog owners go to some extraordinary lengths to pamper their pooches, and some owners may wonder: “Can dogs get LASIK?” 

It has been reported that some dog breeds have a tendency to be nearsighted, others farsighted – just like people. But we have not heard of any actual LASIK procedures performed on dogs to correct these refractive errors. There is a diuretic drug for dogs called “Lasix” that is sometimes confused with “LASIK.” Lasix is used to treat congestive heart failure and edema, or fluid build-up.    

Dogs can also develop eye problems like cataracts and glaucoma and there have been reported cases of dogs receiving laser eye surgeries to provide improved canine vision for these conditions. This type of laser surgery is not the same as LASIK vision correction.

At Charleston Cornea and Refractive Surgery, we do not treat animal eye problems. We do, however, provide technologically advanced LASIK vision correction in Charleston for humans. In fact, the 20/20 vision results we provide for most of our patients allows them to enjoy life with their “best friends” without the hassles of:
  •  Fogged up glasses when playing outside in the snow
  • Dirt under contact lenses when at the dog park 
  • Glasses that slide down their noses during walks in the summertime
If you would like to improve your vision, contact Charleston Cornea and Refractive Surgery today to schedule a free LASIK Consultation and find out if your eyes are right for Charleston LASIK. We also provide treatment for cataracts and glaucoma in Charleston…but only for humans. Call 843-856-5275 or visit www.charlestoncornea.com to learn more. 

Monday, June 1, 2015

Can your brain keep you from seeing?



Scientists made a discovery recently that revealed the brain’s important role in both vision loss and vision restoration.  The results showed that in some cases, even with restored vision, the brain can prevent the newly sighted from complete vision restoration.

At the University of Montreal, scientists have discovered that the rewiring of the senses that occurs in the brains of the long-term blind means that visual restoration may never be complete. "We had the opportunity to study the rare case of a woman with very low vision since birth and whose vision was suddenly restored in adulthood following the implantation of a Boston Keratoprosthesis in her right eye," explained Giulia Dormal, who led the study.

Researchers worked with the patient, a 50 year old woman from Quebec in Canada. They conducted behavioral and neurophysiological measurements before and after surgery, in order to track changes in her sight and brain anatomy, and in the way her brain responded to sights and sounds.

According to Dormal, “Certain regions of the visual cortex even seven months after surgery, and these responses overlapped with visually-driven responses. This overlap may be the reason some aspects of vision, despite having improved with time, still remained below normal range 7 months after surgery."

If you have questions about your vision and the procedures that may be able to correct your vision such as LASIK, please contact the staff at Charleston Cornea & Refractive Surgery in Charleston, South Carolina at 843-856-5275 or www.charlestoncornea.com