Blurry vision after PRK
What are PRK pros?
What are PRK cons?
PRK side effects
You can expect to feel discomfort or pain for up to three days following PRK surgery. Over-the-counter pain medication is often sufficient for handling this discomfort.
If you’re concerned about pain or experience more pain than you can handle, ask your doctor for prescribed pain medication. Your eyes may also feel irritated or watery.
You may find that your eyes are more sensitive to light while they’re healing. Some people also see halos or bursts of light for days or weeks following PRK, especially at night.
You may also experience corneal haze, a cloudy layer that can significantly obstruct vision, for a short period of time after surgery.
Read more about : Lasik eye surgery
While considered safe, PRK surgery is not without risk. Risks include:
- loss of vision that can’t be corrected with eyeglasses or contact lenses
- permanent changes to night vision that include seeing glare and halos
- double vision
- severe or permanent dry eye
- diminished results over time, especially in older and farsighted people
Read more about : IVF in Iran
PRK recovery
During this time you will experience discomfort and very blurry vision after PRK. The healing process during PRK recovery takes longer than for LASIK because the epithelium is removed from the surface of the eye. The epithelium takes three or four days to heal. During this time, you will experience discomfort and very blurry vision after PRK. By four or five days after surgery your vision begins to clear up, although it may take several weeks to a month to become excellent. Visual clarity and crispness after PRK continue to improve for three to six months and then stabilize.
The second phase of recovery from PRK begins when the epithelium has healed. During this phase the eyes are comfortable but the vision is initially blurry. As this phase of recovery progresses, the vision gradually clears up.
During the first month after surgery, you will notice a gradual improvement in your vision. It is common to experience fluctuations in your vision during the first two to three weeks, especially for those with higher corrections. Your eyesight will continue to improve until it becomes stable. The time it takes to reach visual stability after PRK varies for each patient. For some, stability can be achieved in a few weeks. For others, stable vision may take three to six months.
Read more about PRK eye surgery in Iran
Until your vision stabilizes, you may feel more comfortable with a thin pair of eyeglasses to assist you with critical distance vision activities, such as driving at night. Patients over forty-five years of age will require a thin pair of glasses for reading, unless a monovision correction was done.
Read more about How long after prk can I watch tv?
At your consultation, you will have decided whether to have surgery on both eyes the same day or to have each eye treated on different days. With LASIK, we routinely do both eyes on the same day. With PRK, the return of clear vision is slower. If we do both eyes together, you will have blurry vision for a while in both eyes. If we do one eye at a time, you can rely on the vision in the un-operated-on eye while the blurry vision in the operated eye recovers. The major drawback to operating on one eye at a time is the inconvenience of going through the procedure and the recovery twice. Our experience is that most patients choose to do both eyes at the same time.
What are PRK pros?
- can be done on people who have thin corneas or less corneal tissue caused by poor vision or severe nearsightedness
- less risk of removing too much of the cornea
- less expensive than LASIK
- less risk of complications caused by the flap
- dry eye is less likely to result from PRK surgery
What are PRK cons?
- healing and visual recovery take longer because the outer layer of the cornea needs to regenerate itself
- slightly higher risk of infection than LASIK
- blurry vision, discomfort, and sensitivity to light are typically experienced while wearing the bandage contact lens during recovery