How Your Eyes Work
At its most basic, your eye works like a camera, bending light to focus it onto the retina (the back of your eye) for a crisp, clear image.
Now, although the lens inside your eye certainly helps to focus light, the majority of focusing power actually comes from a different part of your eye. The cornea – the clear, protective coating on the surface of your eye – does most of the heavy lifting, making it the main focus of laser vision correction.
What’s got your eyes bent out of shape?
If your eye is the exact, perfectly ideal shape, light will focus precisely where it should on the retina, and you’ll have great vision. However, if the shape of your eye is even a little off, it can result in light focusing at the wrong spot, leading to distorted eyesight.
Quick Fixes – and a New Solution.
Glasses and contact lenses work by compensating for the shape of your eyes, adjusting how light bends so that it will focus in the correct spot on the retina and provide clear vision. The problem is, of course, they only work as long as you’re wearing them. Luckily, patients with vision problems now have options beyond contacts and glasses. Now, your doctor can actually reshape your
cornea, essentially changing your eyes so they permanently focus light how they should. The result? The clear vision you’d have if your eyes were their ideal shape. And that’s where LASIK enters the picture.
